UC-NRLF 


SB    S3b    1S2 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


BUILDERS  OF  THE  NATION 

OR 

From  the  Indian  Trail  to  the  Railroad 

National  Edition 
Complete  in  Twelve  Volumes 


ATIONAL 

n  w  TWELVE  va  uw 


•,         :    . 


,, 


^^ffffiK^Sit 


A 


.      -  I 


-"      .  '•: 


\  I 

-,^^«.  ^| 

TRAHTED 


A  Glrappcr  nn  Sfi 

l"'roni  <t»  original  {^iintinif  by 


NATIONAL  EDITION 

COMPLETE  IN  TWEIYE  VOLUMES 


THE  TRAPPER 


By 

A.  C.  Laut 

Author  of  Heralds  of  Empire,  etc 


NEWTORK 


A 


Copyright,  1902 
By  D.  APPLETON  &  COMPANY 

Copyright,  1908 
By  THE  BRAMPTON  SOCIETY 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB  PAGE 

XII. — BA'TISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER      ....  144 

XIII. — JOHN  COLTER — FREE  TRAPPER          .        .        .  160 

XIV. — THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD  181 

XV. — ROOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT 206 

XVI. — OTHER    LITTLE    ANIMALS    BESIDES    WAHBOOS 

THE  RABBIT 222 

XVII. — THE  RARE  FURS — HOW  THE   TRAPPER   TAKES 

THEM 240 

XVIII.— UNDER   THE  NORTH  STAR— WHERE  FOX  AND 

ERMINE   RUN 258 

XIX. — WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR     .        .        .  275 

APPENDIX      ....  281 


Trapper.  II. 


"  o.  n 

-i -  _»•_  _»_  t>  U 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTEATIONS 


A  TRAPPER  ON  HIS  GUARD  .  .  .          FRONTISPIECE 

From  an  Original  Painting  by  Frank  T.  Johnson 

PAGE 

OLD  WEDGE  FUR  PRESS  IN  USE  AT  FORT  RESOLUTION, 

OP  THE  SUB-ARCTICS  (IN  TEXT)       ....    144 

CARRYING  GOODS  OVER  LONG  PORTAGE  WITH  THE  OLD- 
FASHIONED  RED  RIVER  OX-CARTS  .        .        .        .198 

FORT  MACPHERSON,  THE  MOST   NORTHERLY    POST   OF 

THE  HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY  ,    228 


Trapper.  II. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

CHAPTEK   XII 
BA'TISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER 

THE  city  man,  who  goes  bear-hunting  with'  a  body 
guard  of  armed  guides  in  a  field  where  the  hunted  have 
been  on  the  run  from  the  hunter  for  a  century,  gets  a 
very  tame  idea  of  the  natural  bear  in  its  natural  state. 
Bears  that  have  had  the  fear  of  man  inculcated  with 
longe-range  repeaters  lose  confidence  in  the  prowess  of 
an  aggressive  onset  against  invisible  foes.  The  city 
man  conies  back  from  the  wilds  with  a  legend  of  how 
harmless  bears  have  become.  In  fact,  he  doesn't  be 
lieve  a  wild  animal  ever  attacks  unless  it  is  attacked. 
He  doubts  whether  the  bear  would  go  on  its  life-long 
career  of  rapine  and  death,  if  hunger  did  not  compel 
it,  or  if  repeated  assault  and  battery  from  other  ani 
mals  did  not  teach  the  poor  bear  the  art  of  self-de 
fence. 

Grisly  old  trappers  coming  down  to  the  frontier 
towns  of  the  Western  States  once  a  year  for  provisions, 
or  hanging  round  the  forts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com 
pany  in  Canada  for  the  summer,  tell  a  different  tale. 
Their  hunting  is  done  in  a  field  where  human  presence 
is  still  so  rare  that  it  is  unknown  and  the  bear  treats 
mankind  precisely  as  he  treats  all  other  living  beings 
from  the  moose  and  the  musk-ox  to  mice  and  ants — as 
fair  game  for  his  own  insatiable  maw. 


TYPE  OF  FUR  PRESS. 

Old  wedge  press  in  use  at  Fort  Resolution,  of  the  Sub-Arctics. 


BATISTE,   THE  BEAR  HUNTER  145 

Old  hunters  may  be  great  spinners  of  yarns — 
"  liars  "  the  city  man  calls  them — but  Montagnais,  who 
squats  on  his  heels  round  the  fur  company  forts  on 
Peace  River,  carries  ocular  evidence  in  the  artificial 
ridge  of  a  deformed  nose  that  the  bear  which  he  slew 
was  a  real  one  with  an  epicurean  relish  for  that  part 
of  Indian  anatomy  which  the  Indian  considers  to  be 
the  most  choice  bit  of  a  moose.*  And  the  Kootenay 
hunter  who  was  sent  through  the  forests  of  Idaho  to 
follow  up  the  track  of  a  lost  brave  brought  back  proof 
of  an  actual  bear;  for  he  found  a  dead  man  lying  across 
a  pile  of  logs  with  his  skull  crushed  in  like  an  egg 
shell  by  something  that  had  risen  swift  and  silent  from 
a  lair  on  the  other  side  of  the  logs  and  dealt  the  climb 
ing  brave  one  quick  terrible  blow.  And  little  blind 
Ba'tiste,  wizened  and  old,  who  spent  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life  weaving  grass  mats  and  carving  curi 
ous  little  wooden  animals  for  "the  children  of  the  chief 
factor,  could  convince  you  that  the  bears  he  slew  in  his 
young  days  were  very  real  bears,  altogether  different 
from  the  clumsy  bruins  that  gambol  with  boys  and 
girls  through  fairy  books. 

That  is,  he  could  convince  you  if  he  would;  for 
he  usually  sat  weaving  and  weaving  at  the  grasses — • 
weaving  bitter  thoughts  into  the  woof  of  his  mat- 
without  a  word.  Round  his  white  helmet,  such  as 
British  soldiers  wear  in  hot  lands,  he  always  hung  a 
heavy  thick  linen  thing  like  the  frill  of  a  sun-bonnet, 

*  In  further  confirmation  of  Montagnais's  bear,  the  chief  fac 
tor's  daughter,  who  told  me  the  story,  was  standing  in  the  fort 
gate  when  the  Indian  came  running  back  with  a  grisly  pelt  over 
his  shoulder.  When  he  saw  her  his  hands  went  up  to  conceal 
the  price  he  had  paid  for  the  pelt. 


146  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

coining  over  the  face  as  well  as  the  neck — "  to  keep  de 
sun  off/'  he  would  mumble  out  if  you  asked  him  why. 
More  than  that  of  the  mysterious  frill  worn  on  dark 
days  as  well  as  sunny,  he  would  never  vouch  unless 
some  town-bred  man  patronizingly  pooh-poohed  the 
dangers  of  bear-hunting.  Then  the  grass  strands 
would  tremble  with  excitement  and  the  little  French 
hunter's  body  would  quiver  and  he  would  begin  pour 
ing  forth  a  jumble,  half  habitant  half  Indian  with  a 
mixture  of  all  the  oaths  from  both  languages,  pointing 
and  pointing  at  his  hidden  face  and  bidding  you  look 
what  the  bear  had  done  to  him,  but  never  lifting  the 
thick  frill. 

It  was  somewhere  between  the  tributary  waters 
that  flow  north  to  the  Saskatchewan  and  the  rivers 
that  start  near  the  Saskatchewan  to  flow  south  to  the 
Missouri.  Ba'tiste  and  the  three  trappers  who  were 
with  him  did  not  know  which  side  of  the  boundary 
they  were  on.  By  slow  travel,  stopping  one  day  to 
trap  beaver,  pausing  on  the  way  to  forage  for  meat, 
building  their  canoes  where  they  needed  them  and 
abandoning  the  boats  when  they  made  a  long  overland 
portage,  they  were  three  weeks  north  of  the  American 
fur  post  on  the  banks  of  the  Missouri.  The  hunters 
were  travelling  light-handed.  That  is,  they  were  car 
rying  only  a  little  salt  and  tea  and  tobacco.  For  the 
rest,  they  were  depending  on  their  muskets.  Game 
had  not  been  plentiful. 

Between  the  prairie  and  "the  Mountains  of  the 
Setting  Sun " — as  the  Indians  call  the  Eockies — a 
long  line  of  tortuous,  snaky  red  crawled  sinuously  over 
the  crests  of  the  foothills;  and  all  game — bird  and 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  IIUNTER  147 

beast — will  shun  a  prairie  fire.  There  was  no  wind. 
It  was  the  dead  hazy  calm  of  Indian  summer  in  the 
late  autumn  with  the  sun  swimming  in  the  purplish 
smoke  like  a  blood-red  shield  all  day  and  the  serpent 
line  of  flame  flickering  and  darting  little  tongues  of 
vermilion  against  the  deep  blue  horizon  all  night,  days 
filled  with  the  crisp  smell  of  withered  grasses,  nights 
as  clear  and  cold  as  the  echo  of  a  bell.  On  a  windless 
plain  there  is  no  danger  from  a  prairie  fire.  One  may 
travel  for  weeks  without  nearing  or  distancing  the 
waving  tide  of  fire  against  a  far  sky;  and  the  four 
trappers,  running  short  of  rations,  decided  to  try  to 
flank  the  fire  coming  around  far  enough  ahead  to 
intercept  the  game  that  must  be  moving  away  from  the 
fire  line. 

Nearly  all  hunters,  through  some  dexterity  of 
natural  endowment,  unconsciously  become  specialists. 
One  man  sees  beaver  signs  where  another  sees  only 
deer.  For  Ba'tiste,  the  page  of  nature  spelled 
B-E-A-R!  Fifteen  bear  in  a  winter  is  a  wonderfully 
good  season's  work  for  any  trapper.  Ba'tiste's  record 
for  one  lucky  winter  was  fifty-four.  After  that  he 
was  known  as  the  bear  hunter.  Such  a  reputation 
affects  keen  hunters  differently.  The  Indian  grows 
cautious  almost  to  cowardice.  Ba'tiste  grew  rash. 
He  would  follow  a  wounded  grisly  to  cover.  He  would 
afterward  laugh  at  the  episode  as  a  joke  if  the  wounded 
brute  had  treed  him.  "  For  sure,  good  t'ing  dat  was 
not  de  prairie  dat  tarn,"  he  would  say,  flinging  down 
the  pelt  of  his  foe.  The  other  trappers  with  Indian 
blood  in  their  veins  might  laugh,  but  they  shook  their 
heads  when  his  back  was  turned. 

Flanking  the  fire  by  some  of  the  great  gullies  that 


14:8  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

cut  the  foothills  like  trenches,  the  hunters  began  to 
find  the  signs  they  had  been  seeking.  For  Ba'tiste, 
the  many  different  signs  had  but  one  meaning.  Where 
some  summer  rain  pool  had  dried  almost  to  a  soft  mud 
hole,  the  other  trappers  saw  little  cleft  foot-marks  that 
meant  deer,  and  prints  like  a  baby's  fingers  that 
spelled  out  the  visit  of  some  member  of  the  weasel 
family,  and  broad  splay-hoof  impressions  that  had 
spread  under  the  weight  as  some  giant  moose  had 
gone  shambling  over  the  quaking  mud  bottom.  But 
Ba'tiste  looked  only  at  a  long  shuffling  foot-mark  the 
length  of  a  man's  fore-arm  with  padded  ball-like  pres 
sures  as  of  monster  toes.  The  French  hunter  would 
at  once  examine  which  way  that  great  foot  had  pointed. 
Were  there  other  impressions  dimmer  on  the  dry  mud? 
Did  the  crushed  spear-grass  tell  any  tales  of  what  had 
passed  that  mud  hole?  If  it  did,  Ba'tiste  would  be 
seen  wandering  apparently  aimlessly  out  on  the  prairie, 
carrying  his  uncased  rifle  carefully  that  the  sunlight 
should  not  glint  from  the  barrel,  zigzagging  up  a  foot 
hill  where  perhaps  wild  plums  or  shrub  berries  hung 
rotting  with  frost  ripeness.  Ba'tiste  did  not  stand  full 
height  at  the  top  of  the  hill.  He  dropped  face  down, 
took  off  his  hat,  or  scarlet  "  safety  "  handkerchief,  and 
peered  warily  over  the  crest  of  the  hill.  If  he  went 
on  over  into  the  next  valley,  the  other  men  would  say 
they  "  guessed  he  smelt  bear."  If  he  came  back,  they 
knew  he  had  been  on  a  cold  scent  that  had  faded  indis- 
tinguishably  as  the  grasses  thinned. 

Southern  slopes  of  prairie  and  foothill  are  often 
matted  tangles  of  a  raspberry  patch.  Here  Ba'tiste 
read  many  things — stories  of  many  bears,  of  families, 
of  cubs,  of  old  cross  fellows  wandering  alone.  Great 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  149 

slabs  of  stone  had  been  clawed  up  by  mighty  hands. 
Worms  and  snails  and  all  the  damp  clammy  things 
that  cling  to  the  cold  dark  between  stone  and  earth 
had  been  gobbled  up  by  some  greedy  forager.  In  the 
trenched  ravines  crossed  by  the  trappers  lay  many  a 
hidden  forest  of  cottonwood  or  poplar  or  willow.  Here 
was  refuge,  indeed,  for  the  wandering  creatures  of  the 
treeless  prairie  that  rolled  away  from  the  tops  of  the 
cliffs. 

Many  secrets  could  be  read  from  the  clustered 
woods  of  the  ravines.  The  other  hunters  might  look 
for  the  fresh  nibbled  alder  bush  where  a  busy  beaver 
had  been  laying  up  store  for  winter,  or  detect  the  blink 
of  a  russet  ear  among  the  seared  foliage  betraying  a 
deer,  or  wonder  what  flesh-eater  had  caught  the  poor 
jack  rabbit  just  outside  his  shelter  of  thorny  brush. 

The  hawk  soaring  and  dropping — lilting  and  fall 
ing  and  lifting  again — might  mean  that  a  little  mink 
was  "  playing  dead  "  to  induce  the  bird  to  swoop  down 
so  that  the  vampire  beast  could  suck  the  hawk's  blood, 
or  that  the  hawk  was  watching  for  an  unguarded  mo 
ment  to  plunge  down  with  his  talons  in  a  poor  "  fool- 
hen's  "  feathers. 

These  things  might  interest  the  others.  They  did 
not  interest  Ba'tiste.  Ba'tiste's  eyes  were  for  lairs  of 
grass  crushed  so  recently  that  the  spear  leaves  were 
even  now  rising;  for  holes  in  the  black  mould  where 
great  ripping  claws  had  been  tearing  up  roots;  for  hol 
low  logs  and  rotted  stumps  where  a  black  bear  might 
have  crawled  to  take  his  afternoon  siesta;  for  punky 
trees  which  a  grisly  might  have  torn  open  to  gobble 
ants'  eggs;  for  scratchings  down  the  bole  of  poplar  or 
cottonwood  where  some  languid  bear  had  been  sharp- 


150       THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

ening  his  claws  in  midsummer  as  a  cat  will  scratch 
chair-legs;  for  great  pits  deep  in  the  clay  banks,  where 
some  silly  badger  or  gopher  ran  down  to  the  depths  of 
his  burrow  in  sheer  terror  only  to  have  old  bruin  come 
ripping  and  tearing  to  the  innermost  recesses,  with 
scattered  fur  left  that  told  what  had  happened. 

Some  soft  oozy  moss-padded  lair,  deep  in  the  marsh 
with  the  reeds  of  the  brittle  cat-tails  lifting  as  if  a 
sleeper  had  just  risen,  sets  Ba'tiste's  pulse  hopping — 
jumping — marking  time  in  thrills  like  the  lithe 
bounds  of  a  pouncing  mountain-cat.  With  tread  soft 
as  the  velvet  paw  of  a  panther,  he  steals  through  the 
cane-brake  parting  the  reeds  before  each  pace,  brush 
ing  aside  softly — silently  what  might  crush! — snap!— 
sound  ever  so  slight  an  alarm  to  the  little  pricked  ears 
of  a  shaggy  head  tossing  from  side  to  side — jerk — jerk 
— from  right  to  left — from  left  to  right — always  on 
the  listen! — on  the  listen! — for  prey! — for  prey! 

"  Oh,  for  sure,  that  Ba'tiste,  he  was  but  a  fool- 
hunter,"  as  his  comrades  afterward  said  (it  is  always  so 
very  plain  afterward)  ;  "that  Ba'tiste,  he  was  a  fool! 
What  man  else  go  step — step — into  the  marsh  after  a 
bear! » 

But  the  truth  was  that  Ba'tiste,  the  cunning  rascal, 
always  succeeded  in  coming  out  of  the  marsh,  out  of 
the  bush,  out  of  the  windfall,  sound  as  a  top,  safe  and 
unscratched,  with  a  bear-skin  over  his  shoulder,  the 
head  swinging  pendant  to  show  what  sort  of  fellow  he 
had  mastered. 

"  Dat  wan! — ah! — diable! — he  has  long  sharp  nose 
— he  was  thin — thin  as  a  barrel  all  gone  but  de  hoops 
— ah! — voila! — he  was  wan  ugly  gargon,  was  dat  bear!  " 

Where  the  hunters  found  tufts  of  fur  on  the  sage 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  151 

brush,  bits  of  skin  on  the  spined  cactus,  the  others 
might  vow  coyotes  had  worried  a  badger.  Ba'tiste 
would  have  it  that  the  badger  had  been  slain  by  a  bear. 
The  cached  carcass  of  fawn  or  doe,  of  course,  meant 
bear;  for  the  bear  is  an  epicure  that  would  have  meat 
gamey.  To  that  the  others  would  agree. 

And  so  the  shortening  autumn  days  with  the  shim 
mering  heat  of  a  crisp  noon  and  the  noiseless  chill  of 
starry  twilights  found  the  trappers  canoeing  leisurely 
up-stream  from  the  northern  tributaries  of  the  Mis 
souri  nearing  the  long  overland  trail  that  led  to  the 
hunting-fields  in  Canada. 

One  evening  they  came  to  a  place  bounded  by  high 
cliff  banks  with  the  flats  heavily  wooded  by  poplar  and 
willow.  Ba'tiste  had  found  signs  that  were  hot — oh! 
so  hot!  The  mould  of  an  uprooted  gopher  hole  was  so 
fresh  that  it  had  not  yet  dried.  This  was  not  a  re 
gion  of  timber-wolves.  What  had  dug  that  hole? 
Not  the  small,  skulking  coyote — the  vagrant  of  prairie 
life!  Oh! — no! — the  coyote  like  other  vagrants  earns 
his  living  without  work,  by  skulking  in  the  wake  of 
the  business-like  badger;  and  when  the  badger  goes 
down  in  the  gopher  hole,  Master  Coyote  stands  near 
by  and  gobbles  up  all  the  stray  gophers  that  bolt  to 
escape  the  invading  badger.*  What  had  dug  the  hole? 
Ba'tiste  thinks  that  he  knows. 

That  was  on  open  prairie.  Just  below  the  cliff  is  an 
other  kind  of  hole — a  roundish  pit  dug  between  moss- 

*  This  phase  of  prairie  life  must  not  be  set  down  to  writer's 
license.  It  is  something  that  every  rider  of  the  plains  can  see  any 
time  he  has  patience  to  rein  up  and  sit  like  a  statue  within  field- 
glass  distance  of  the  gopher  burrows  about  nightfall  when  the 
badgers  are  running. 


152  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

covered  logs  and  earth  wall,  a  pit  with  grass  clawed 
down  into  it,  snug  and  hidden  and  sheltered  as  a  bird's 
nest.  If  the  pit  is  what  Ba'tiste  thinks,  somewhere  on 
the  banks  of  the  stream  should  be  a  watering-place. 
Pie  proposes  that  they  beach  the  canoes  and  camp  here. 
Twilight  is  not  a  good  time  to  still  hunt  an  unseen 
bear.  Twilight  is  the  time  when  the  bear  himself 
goes  still  hunting.  Ba'tiste  will  go  out  in  the  early 
morning.  Meantime  if  he  stumbles  on  what  looks  like 
a  trail  to  the  watering-place,  he  will  set  a  trap. 

Camp  is  not  for  the  regular  trapper  what  it  is  for 
the  amateur  hunter — a  time  of  rest  and  waiting  while 
others  skin  the  game  and  prepare  supper. 

One  hunter  whittles  the  willow  sticks  that  are  to 
make  the  camp  fire.  Another  gathers  moss  or  boughs 
for  a  bed.  If  fish  can  be  got,  some  one  has  out  a  line. 
The  kettle  hisses  from  the  cross-bar  between  notched 
sticks  above  the  fire,  and  the  meat  sizzling  at  the  end 
of  a  forked  twig  sends  up  a  flavour  that  whets  every 
appetite.  Over  the  upturned  canoes  bend  a  couple  of 
men  gumming  afresh  all  the  splits  and  seams  against 
to-morrow's  voyage.  Then  with  a  flip-flop  that  tells  of 
the  other  side  of  the  flap-jacks  being  browned,  the  cook 
yodels  in  crescendo  that  "  Sup — per  ! — 's — read — ee  !  " 

Supper  over,  a  trap  or  two  may  be  set  in  likely 
places.  The  men  may  take  a  plunge;  for  in  spite  of 
their  tawny  skins,  these  earth-coloured  fellows  have 
closer  acquaintance  with  water  than  their  appearance 
would  indicate.  The  man-smell  is  as  acute  to  the 
beast's  nose  as  the  rank  fur-animal-smell  is  to  the 
man's  nose;  and  the  first  thing  that  an  Indian  who  has 
had  a  long  run  of  ill-luck  does  is  to  get  a  native 
"  sweating-bath  "  and  make  himself  clean. 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  153 

On  the  ripple  of  the  flowing  river  are  the  red  bars 
of  the  camp  fire.  Among  the  willows,  perhaps,  the 
bole  of  some  birch  stands  out  white  and  spectral. 
Though  there  is  no  wind,  the  poplars  shiver  with  a 
fall  of  wan,  faded  leaves  like  snow-flakes  on  the  grave 
of  summer.  Red  bills  and  whisky-jacks  and  lonely 
phoebe-birds  came  fluttering  and  pecking  at  the 
crumbs.  Out  from  the  gray  thicket  bounds  a  cotton 
tail  to  jerk  up  on  his  hind  legs  with  surprise  at  the 
camp  fire.  A  blink  of  his  long  ear,  and  he  has  bounded 
back  to  tell  the  news  to  his  rabbit  family.  Overhead, 
with  shrill  clangour,  single  file  and  in  long  wavering 
V  lines,  wing  geese  migrating  southward  for  the  sea 
son.  The  children's  hour,  has  a  great  poet  called  a 
certain  time  of  day?  Then  this  is  the  hour  of  the 
wilderness  hunter,  the  hour  when  "  the  Mountains  of 
the  Setting  Sun  "  are  flooded  in  fiery  lights  from  zone 
to  zenith  with  the  snowy  heights  overtopping  the  far 
rolling  prairie  like  clouds  of  opal  at  poise  in  mid- 
heaven,  the  hour  when  the  camp  fire  lies  on  the  russet 
autumn-tinged  earth  like  a  red  jewel,  and  the  far  line 
of  the  prairie  fire  billows  against  the  darkening  east 
in  a  tide  of  vermilion  flame. 

Unless  it  is  raining,  the  voyageurs  do  not  erect 
their  tent;  for  they  will  sleep  in  the  open,  feet  to  the 
fire,  or  under  the  canoes,  close  to  the  great  earth,  into 
whose  very  fibre  their  beings  seem  to  be  rooted.  And 
now  is  the  time  when  the  hunters  spin  their  yarns  and 
exchange  notes  of  all  they  have  seen  in  the  long  silent 
day.  There  was  the  prairie  chicken  with  a  late  brood 
of  half-grown  clumsy  clucking  chicks  amply  able  to 
take  care  of  themselves,  but  still  clinging  to  the  old 
mother's  care.  When  the  hunter  came  suddenly  on 


154  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

them,  over  the  old  hen  went,  flopping  broken-winged 
to  decoy  the  trapper  till  her  children  could  run  for 
shelter — when — lo! — of  a  sudden,  the  broken  wing  is 
mended  and  away  she  darts  on  both  wings  before  he 
has  uncased  his  gun!  There  are  the  stories  of  bear 
hunters  like  Ba'tiste  sitting  on  the  other  side  of  the 
fire  there,  who  have  been  caught  in  their  own  bear 
traps  and  held  till  they  died  of  starvation  and  their 
bones  bleached  in  the  rusted  steel. 

That  story  has  such  small  relish  for  Ba'tiste  that 
he  hitches  farther  away  from  the  others  and  lies  back 
flat  on  the  ground  close  to  the  willow  under-tangle 
with  his  head  on  his  hand. 

"  For  sure,"  says  Ba'tiste  contemptuously,  "  no 
body  doesn't  need  no  tree  to  climb  here !  Sacre ! — cry 
wolf! — wolf! — and  for  sure! — diable! — de  beeg  loup- 
garou  will  eat  you  yet ! " 

Down  somewhere  from  those  stars  overhead  drops 
a  call  silvery  as  a  flute,  clear  as  a  piccolo — some  night 
bird  lilting  like  a  mote  on  the  far  oceans  of  air.  The 
trappers  look  up  with  a  movement  that  in  other  men 
would  be  a  nervous  start;  for  any  shrill  cry  pierces  the 
silence  of  the  prairie  in  almost  a  stab.  Then  the  men 
go  on  with  their  yarn  telling  of  how  the  Blackfeet 
murdered  some  traders  on  this  very  ground  not  long 
ago  till  the  gloom  gathering  over  willow  thicket  and 
encircling  cliffs  seems  peopled  with  those  marauding 
warriors.  One  man  rises,  saying  that  he  is  "  goin'  to 
turn  in  "  and  is  taking  a  step  through  the  dark  to  his 
canoe  when  there  is  a  dull  pouncing  thud.  For  an  in 
stant  the  trappers  thought  that  their  comrade  had 
stumbled  over  his  boat.  But  a  heavy  groan — a  low 
guttural  cry — a  shout  of  "Help — help — help  Ba'- 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  155 

tiste!"  and  the  man  who  had  risen  plunged  into  the 
crashing  cane-brake,  calling  out  incoherently  for  them 
to  "help— help  Ba'tiste!" 

In  the  confusion  of  cries  and  darkness,  it  was  im 
possible  for  the  other  two  trappers  to  know  what  had 
happened.  Their  first  thought  was  of  the  Indians 
whose  crimes  they  had  been  telling.  Their  second 
was  for  their  rifles — and  they  had  both  sprung  over 
the  fire  where  they  saw  the  third  man  striking — strik 
ing — striking  wildly  at  something  in  the  dark.  A  low 
worrying  growl — and  they  descried  the  Frenchman 
rolling  over  and  over,  clutched  by  or  clutching  a  huge 
furry  form — hitting — plunging  with  his  knife — strug 
gling — screaming  with  agony. 

"It's  Ba'tiste!  It's  a  bear!"  shouted  the  third 
man,  who  was  attempting  to  drive  the  brute  off  by 
raining  blows  on  its  head. 

Man  and  bear  were  an  indistinguishable  struggling 
mass.  Should  they  shoot  in  the  half-dark?  Then  the 
Frenchman  uttered  the  scream  of  one  in  death-throes: 
"  Shoot !  —  shoot !  —  shoot  quick  !  She's  striking  my 
face  ! — she's  striking  my  face — 

And  before  the  words  had  died,  sharp  flashes  of 
light  cleft  the  dark — the  great  beast  rolled  over  with 
a  coughing  growl,  and  the  trappers  raised  their  com 
rade  from  the  ground. 

The  bear  had  had  him  on  his  back  between  her 
teeth  by  the  thick  chest  piece  of  his  double-breasted 
buck-skin.  Except  for  his  face,  he  seemed  uninjured; 
but  down  that  face  the  great  brute  had  drawn  the 
claws  of  her  fore  paw. 

Ba'tiste  raised  his  hands  to  his  face. 

"  Mon  dieu!  "  he  asked  thickly,  fumbling  with  both 


156  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

hands,  "what  is  done  to  my  eyes?    Is  the  fire  out?     I 
cannot  see!  " 

Then  the  man  who  had  fought  like  a  demon  armed 
with  only  a  hunting-knife  fainted  because  of  what  his 
hands  felt. 


Traitors  there  are  among  trappers  as  among  all 
other  classes,  men  like  those  who  deserted  Glass  on  the 
Missouri,  and  Scott  on  the  Platte,  and  how  many 
others  whose  treachery  will  never  be  known. 

But  Ba'tiste's  comrades  stayed  with  him  on  the 
banks  of  the  river  that  flows  into  the  Missouri.  One 
cared  for  the  blind  man.  The  other  two  foraged  for 
game.  When  the  wounded  hunter  could  be  moved, 
they  put  him  in  a  canoe  and  hurried  down-stream  to 
the  fur  post  before  the  freezing  of  the  rivers.  At  the 
fur  post,  the  doctor  did  what  he  could;  but  a  doctor 
cannot  restore  what  has  been  torn  away.  The  next 
spring,  Ba'tiste  was  put  on  a  pack  horse  and  sent  to 
his  relatives  at  the  Canadian  fur  post.  Here  his  sis 
ters  made  him  the  curtain  to  hang  round  his  helmet 
and  set  him  to  weaving  grass  mats  that  the  days  might 
not  drag  so  wearily. 

Ask  Ba'tiste  whether  he  agrees  with  the  amateur 
hunter  that  bears  never  attack  unless  they  are  at 
tacked,  that  they  would  never  become  ravening  crea 
tures  of  prey  unless  the  assaults  of  other  creatures 
taught  them  ferocity,  ask  Ba'tiste  this  and  something 
resembling  the  snarl  of  a  baited  beast  breaks  from  the 
lipless  face  under  the  veil: 

"S — s — sz! — "  with  a  quiver  of  inexpressible  rage. 
"  The  bear — it  is  an  animal! — the  bear! — it  is  a  beast! 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  157 

— ton  jours ! — the  bear  ! — it  is  a  beast ! — always — al 
ways  !  "  And  his  hands  clinch. 

Then  he  falls  to  carving  of  the  little  wooden  ani 
mals  and  weaving  of  sad,  sad,  bitter  thoughts  into  the 
warp  of  the  Indian  mat. 

Are  such  onslaughts  common  among  bears,  or  are 
they  the  mad  freaks  of  the  bear's  nature?  President 
Roosevelt  tells  of  two  soldiers  bitten  to  death  in  the 
South- West;  and  M.  L'Abbe  Dugast,  of  St.  Boniface, 
Manitoba,  incidentally  relates  an  experience  almost 
similar  to  that  of  Ba'tiste  which  occurred  in  the  North- 
West.  Lest  Ba'tiste's  case  seem  overdrawn,  I  quote 
the  Abbe's  words : 

"  At  a  little  distance  Madame  Lajimoniere  and  the 
other  women  were  preparing  the  tents  for  the  night, 
when  all  at  once  Bouvier  gave  a  cry  of  distress  and 
called  to  his  companions  to  help  him.  At  the  first 
shout,  each  hunter  siezed  his  gun  and  prepared  to  de 
fend  himself  against  the  attack  of  an  enemy;  they  hur 
ried  to  the  other  side  of  the  ditch  to  see  what  was  the 
matter  with  Bouvier,  and  what  he  was  struggling  with. 
They  had  no  idea  that  a  wild  animal  would  come  near 
the  fire  to  attack  a  man  even  under  cover  of  night;  for 
fire  usually  has  the  effect  of  frightening  wild  beasts. 
However,  almost  before  the  four  hunters  knew  what 
had  happened,  they  saw  their  unfortunate  companion 
dragged  into  the  woods  by  a  bear  followed  by  her  two 
cubs.  She  held  Bouvier  in  her  claws  and  struck  him 
savagely  in  the  face  to  stun  him.  As  soon  as  she  saw 
the  four  men  in  pursuit,  she  redoubled  her  fury  against 
her  prey,  tearing  his  face  with  her  claws.  M.  Lajimon 
iere,  who  was  an  intrepid  hunter,  baited  her  with  the 
butt  end  of  his  gun  to  make  her  let  go  her  hold,  as  he 


158      THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

dared  not  shoot  for  fear  of  killing  the  man  while  try 
ing  to  save  him,  but  Bouvier,  who  felt  himself  being 
choked,  cried  with  all  his  strength:  i  Shoot;  I  would 
rather  be  shot  than  eaten  alive!'  M.  Lajimoniere 
pulled  the  trigger  as  close  to  the  bear  as  possible, 
wounding  her  mortally.  She  let  go  Bouvier  and  be 
fore  her  strength  was  exhausted  made  a  wild  attack 
upon  M.  Lajimoniere,  who  expected  this  and  as  his  gun 
had  only  one  barrel  loaded,  he  ran  towards  the  canoe, 
where  he  had  a  second  gun  fully  charged.  He  had 
hardly  seized  it  before  the  bear  reached  the  shore  and 
tried  to  climb  into  the  canoe,  but  fearing  no  longer 
to  wound  his  friend,  M.  Lajimoniere  aimed  full  at  her 
breast  and  this  time  she  was  killed  instantly.  As  soon 
as  the  bear  was  no  longer  to  be  feared,  Madame  La 
jimoniere,  who  had  been  trembling  with  fear  during 
the  tumult,  went  to  raise  the  unfortunate  Bouvier, 
who  was  covered  with  wounds  and  nearly  dead.  The 
bear  had  torn  the  skin  from  his  face  with  her  nails 
from  the  roots  of  his  hair  to  the  lower  part  of  his  chin. 
His  eyes  and  nose  were  gone — in  fact  his  features  were 
indiscernible — but  he  was  not  mortally  injured.  His 
wounds  were  dressed  as  well  as  the  circumstances 
would  permit,  and  thus  crippled  he  was  carried  to  the 
Fort  of  the  Prairies,  Madame  Lajimoniere  taking  care 
of  him  all  through  the  journey.  In  time  his  wounds 
were  successfully  healed,  but  he  was  blind  and  infirm  to 
the  end  of  his  life.  He  dwelt  at  the  Fort  of  the  Prai 
ries  for  many  years,  but  when  the  first  missionaries 
reached  Eed  Eiver  in  1818,  he  persuaded  his  friends 
to  send  him  to  St.  Boniface  to  meet  the  priests  and 
ended  his  days  in  M.  Provencher's  house.  He  em 
ployed  his  time  during  the  last  years  of  his  life  in  mak- 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  159 

ing  crosses  and  crucifixes  blind  as  he  was,  but  he  never 
made  any  chefs  d'ceuvre" 

Such  is  bear-hunting  and  such  is  the  nature  of  the 
bear.  And  these  things  are  not  of  the  past.  Wher 
ever  long-range  repeaters  have  not  put  the  fear  of  man 
in  the  animal  heart,  the  bear  is  the  aggressor.  Even 
as  I  write  comes  word  from  a  little  frontier  fur  post 
which  I  visited  in  1901,  of  a  seven-year-old  boy  being 
waylaid  and  devoured  by  a  grisly  only  four  miles  back 
from  a  transcontinental  railway.  This  is  the  second 
death  from  the  unprovoked  attacks  of  bears  within  a 
month  in  that  country — and  that  month,  the  month  of 
August,  1902,  when  sentimental  ladies  and  gentlemen 
many  miles  away  from  danger  are  sagely  discussing 
whether  the  bear  is  naturally  ferocious  or  not — 
whether,  in  a  word,  it  is  altogether  humane  to  hunt 
bears. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

JOHN  COLTER — FREE  TRAPPER 

LONG  before  sunrise  hunters  were  astir  in  the  moun 
tains. 

The  Crows  were  robbers,  the  Blackfeet  murderers; 
and  scouts  of  both  tribes  haunted  every  mountain  defile 
where  a  white  hunter  might  pass  with  provisions  and 
peltries  which  these  rascals  could  plunder. 

The  trappers  circumvented  their  foes  by  setting 
the  traps  after  nightfall  and  lifting  the  game  before 
daybreak. 

Night  in  the  mountains  was  full  of  a  mystery  that 
the  imagination  of  the  Indians  peopled  with  terrors 
enough  to  frighten  them  away.  The  sudden  stilling 
of  mountain  torrent  and  noisy  leaping  cataract  at  sun 
down  when  the  thaw  of  the  upper  snows  ceased,  the 
smothered  roar  of  rivers  under  ice,  the  rush  of  whirl 
pools  through  the  blackness  of  some  far  canon,  the 
crashing  of  rocks  thrown  down  by  unknown  forces,  the 
shivering  echo  that  multiplied  itself  a  thousandfold 
and  ran  "  rocketing  "  from  peak  to  peak  startling  the 
silences — these  things  filled  the  Indian  with  supersti 
tious  fears. 

The  gnomes,  called  in  trapper's  vernacular  "  hoo- 
doos  " — great  pillars  of  sandstone  higher  than  a  house, 
left  standing  in  valleys  by  prehistoric  floods — were  to 
160 


JOHN  COLTER—FREE  TRAPPER  K>1 

the  Crows  and  Blackfeet  petrified  giants  that  only 
awakened  at  night  to  hurl  down  rocks  on  intruding 
mortals.  And  often  the  quiver  of  a  shadow  in  the  night 
wind  gave  reality  to  the  Indian's  fears.  The  purr  of 
streams  over  rocky  bed  was  whispering,  the  queer 
quaking  echoes  of  falling  rocks  were  giants  at  war, 
and  the  mists  rising  from  swaying  waterfalls,  spirit- 
forms  portending  death. 

Morning  came  more  ghostly  among  the  peaks. 

Thick  white  clouds  banked  the  mountains  from  peak 
to  base,  blotting  out  every  scar  and  tor  as  a  sponge 
might  wash  a  slate.  Valleys  lay  blanketed  in  smoking 
mist.  As  the  sun  came  gradually  up  to  the  horizon  far 
away  east  behind  the  mountains,  scarp  and  pinnacle 
butted  through  the  fog,  stood  out  bodily  from  the  mist, 
seemed  to  move  like  living  giants  from  the  cloud  banks. 
"  How  could  they  do  that  if  they  were  not  alive  ? " 
asked  the  Indian.  Elsewhere,  shadows  came  from  sun, 
moon,  starlight,  or  camp-fire.  But  in  these  valleys 
were  pencilled  shadows  of  peaks  upside  down,  shadows 
all  the  colours  of  the  rainbow  pointing  to  the  bottom 
of  the  green  Alpine  lakes,  hours  and  hours  before  any 
sun  had  risen  to  cause  the  shadows.  All  this  meant 
"  bad  medicine "  to  the  Indian,  or,  in  white  man's 
language,  mystery. 

Unless  they  were  foraging  in  large  bands,  Crows 
and  Blackfeet  shunned  the  mountains  after  nightfall. 
That  gave  the  white  man  a  chance  to  trap  in  safety. 

Early  one  morning  two  white  men  slipped  out  of 
their  sequestered  cabin  built  in  hiding  of  the  hills  at 
the  head  waters  of  the  Missouri.  Under  covert  of  brush 
wood  lay  a  long  odd-shaped  canoe,  sharp  enough  at  the 
prow  to  cleave  the  narrowest  waters  between  rocks,  so 
12 


162  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

sharp  that  French  voyageurs  gave  this  queer  craft  the 
name  Cf  canot  a  bee  d'esturgeon  " — that  is,  a  canoe  like 
the  nose  of  a  sturgeon.  This  American  adaptation  of 
the  Frenchman's  craft  was  not  of  birch-bark.  That 
would  be  too  frail  to  essay  the  rock-ribbed  cafions  of 
the  mountain  streams.  It  was  usually  a  common  dug 
out,  hollowed  from  a  cottonwood  or  other  light  timber, 
with  such  an  angular  narrow  prow  that  it  could  take 
the  sheerest  dip  and  mount  the  steepest  wave-crest 
where  a  rounder  boat  would  fill  and  swamp.  Dragging 
this  from  cover,  the  two  white  men  pushed  out  on  the 
Jefferson  Fork,  dipping  now  on  this  side,  now  on  that, 
using  the  reversible  double-bladed  paddles  which  only 
an  amphibious  boatman  can  manage.  The  two  men  shot 
out  in  mid-stream,  where  the  mists  would  hide  them 
from  each  shore ;  a  moment  later  the  white  fog  had  en 
folded  them,  and  there  was  no  trace  of  human  pres 
ence  but  the  trail  of  dimpling  ripples  in  the  wake  of 
the  canoe. 

No  talking,  no  whistling,  not  a  sound  to  betray 
them.  And  there  were  good  reasons  why  these  men 
did  not  wish  their  presence  known.  One  was  Potts, 
the  other  John  Colter.  Both  had  been  with  the  Lewis 
and  Clark  exploring  party  of  1804-'05,  when  a  Black- 
foot  brave  had  been  slain  for  horse-thieving  by  the 
first  white  men  to  cross  the  Upper  Missouri.  Besides, 
the  year  before  coming  to  the  Jefferson,  Colter  had 
been  with  the  Missouri  Company's  fur  brigade  under 
Manuel  Lisa,  and  had  gone  to  the  Crows  as  an  emissary 
from  the  fur  company.  While  with  the  Crows,  a  battle 
had  taken  place  against  the  Blackfeet,  in  which  they 
suffered  heavy  loss  owing  to  Colter's  prowess.  That 
made  the  Blackfeet  sworn  enemies  to  Colter. 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  103 

Turning  off  the  Jefferson,  the  trappers  headed  their 
canoe  up  a  side  stream,  probably  one  of  those  marshy 
reaches  where  beavers  have  formed  a  swamp  by  dam 
ming  up  the  current  of  a  sluggish  stream.  Such  quiet 
waters  are  favourite  resorts  for  beaver  and  mink  and 
marten  and  pekan.  Setting  their  traps  only  after 
nightfall,  the  two  men  could  not  possibly  have  put  out 
more  than  forty  or  fifty.  Thirty  traps  are  a  heavy  day's 
work  for  one  man.  Six  prizes  out  of  thirty  are  con 
sidered  a  wonderful  run  of  luck;  but  the  empty  traps 
must  be  examined  as  carefully  as  the  successful  ones. 
Many  that  have  been  mauled,  "  scented  "  by  a  beaver 
scout  and  left,  must  be  replaced.  Others  must  have 
fresh  bait;  others,  again,  carried  to  better  grounds 
where  there  are  more  game  signs. 

Either  this  was  a  very  lucky  morning  and  the  men 
were  detained  taking  fresh  pelts,  or  it  was  a  very  un 
lucky  morning  and  the  men  had  decided  to  trap  farther 
up-stream ;  for  when  the  mists  began  to  rise,  the  hunt 
ers  were  still  in  their  canoe.  Leaving  the  beaver  mead 
ow,  they  continued  paddling  up-stream  away  from  the 
Jefferson.  A  more  hidden  watercourse  they  could 
hardly  have  found.  The  swampy  beaver-runs  narrowed, 
the  shores  rose  higher  and  higher  into  rampart  walls, 
and  the  dark-shadowed  waters  came  leaping  down  in 
the  lumpy,  uneven  runnels  of  a  small  canon.  You  can 
always  tell  whether  the  waters  of  a  canon  are  com 
pressed  or  not,  whether  they  come  from  broad,  swampy 
meadows  or  clear  snow  streams  smaller  than  the  canon. 
The  marsh  waters  roll  down  swift  and  black  and  turbid, 
raging  against  the  crowding  walls  ;  the  snow  streams 
leap  clear  and  foaming  as  champagne,  and  are  in  too 
great  a  hurry  to  stop  and  quarrel  with  the  rocks.  It  is 


164  THE  STORY   OP  THE  TRAPPER 

altogether  likely  these  men  recognised  swampy  water, 
and  were  ascending  the  canon  in  search  of  a  fresh 
beaver-marsh;  or  they  would  not  have  continued  pad 
dling  six  miles  above  the  Jefferson  with  daylight  grow 
ing  plainer  at  every  mile.  First  the  mist  rose  like  a 
smoky  exhalation  from  the  river;  then  it  flaunted 
across  the  rampart  walls  in  banners;  then  the  far 
mountain  peaks  took  form  against  the  sky,  islands  in  a 
sea  of  fog;  then  the  cloud  banks  were  floating  in  mid- 
heaven  blindingly  white  from  a  sun  that  painted  each 
canon  wall  in  the  depths  of  the  water. 

How  much  farther  would  the  canon  lead?  Should 
they  go  higher  up  or  not  ?  Was  it  wooded  or  clear 
plain  above  the  walls  ?  The  man  paused.  What  was 
that  noise? 

"  Like  buffalo/'  said  Potts. 

"  Might  be  Blackfeet,"  answered  Colter. 

No.  What  would  Blackfeet  be  doing,  riding  at  a 
pace  to  make  such  thunder  so  close  to  a  canon?  It 
was  only  a  buffalo  herd  stampeding  on  the  annual 
southern  run.  Again  Colter  urged  that  the  noise  might 
be  from  Indians.  It  would  be  safer  for  them  to  re 
treat  at  once.  At  which  Potts  wanted  to  know  if 
Colter  were  afraid,  using  a  stronger  word — "  coward." 

Afraid?  Colter  afraid?  Colter  who  had  remained 
behind  Lewis  and  Clark's  men  to  trap  alone  in  the 
wilds  for  nearly  two  years,  who  had  left  Manuel  Lisa's 
brigade  to  go  alone  among  the  thieving  Crows,  whose 
leadership  had  helped  the  Crows  to  defeat  the  Black- 
feet? 

Anyway,  it  would  now  be  as  dangerous  to  go  back 
as  forward.  They  plainly  couldn't  land  here.  Let  them 
go  ahead  where  the  walls  seemed  to  slope  down  to 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  165 

shore.  Two  or  three  strokes  sent  the  canoe  round  an 
elbow  of  rock  into  the  narrow  course  of  a  creek.  In 
stantly  out  sprang  five  or  six  hundred  Blackfeet  war 
riors  with  weapons  levelled  guarding  both  sides  of  the 
stream. 

An  Indian  scout  had  discovered  the  trail  of  the  white 
men  and  sent  the  whole  band  scouring  ahead  to  inter 
cept  them  at  this  narrow  pass.  The  chief  stepped  for 
ward,  and  with  signals  that  were  a  command  beckoned 
the  hunters  ashore. 

As  is  nearly  always  the  case,  the  rash  man  was  the 
one  to  lose  his  head,  the  cautious  man  the  one  to  keep 
his  presence  of  mind.  Potts  was  for  an  attempt  at 
flight,  when  every  bow  on  both  sides  of  the  river  would 
have  let  fly  a  shot.  Colter  was  for  accepting  the  situ 
ation,  trusting  to  his  own  wit  for  subsequent  escape. 

Colter,  who  was  acting  as  steersman,  sent  the  canoe 
ashore.  Bottom  had  not  grated  before  a  savage 
snatched  Potts's  rifle  from  his  hands.  Springing  ashore, 
Colter  forcibly  wrested  the  weapon  back  and  coolly 
handed  it  to  Potts. 

But  Potts  had  lost  all  the  rash  courage  of  a  mo 
ment  before,  and  with  one  push  sent  the  canoe  into 
mid-stream.  Colter  shouted  at  him  to  come  back- 
come  back !  Indians  have  more  effective  arguments. 
A  bow-string  twanged,  and  Potts  screamed  out,  "  Col 
ter,  I  am  wounded  !  " 

Again  Colter  urged  him  to  land.  The  wound 
turned  Pott's  momentary  fright  to  a  paroxysm  of  rage. 
Aiming  his  rifle,  he  shot  his  Indian  assailant  dead.  If 
it  was  torture  that  he  feared,  that  act  assured  him  at 
least  a  quick  death ;  for,  in  Colter's  language,  man  and 
boat  were  instantaneously  <e  made  a  riddle  of." 


166  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

No  man  admires  courage  more  than  the  Indian; 
and  the  Blackfeet  recognised  in  their  captive  one  who 
had  been  ready  to  defend  his  comrade  against  them  all, 
and  who  had  led  the  Crows  to  victory  against  their  own 
band. 

The  prisoner  surrendered  his  weapons.  He  was 
stripped  naked,  but  neither  showed  sign  of  fear  nor 
made  a  move  to  escape.  Evidently  the  Blackfeet  could 
have  rare  sport  with  this  game  white  man.  His  life 
in  the  Indian  country  had  taught  him  a  few  words  of 
the  Blackfoot  language.  He  heard  them  conferring  as 
to  how  he  should  be  tortured  to  atone  for  all  that  the 
Blackfeet  had  suffered  at  white  men's  hands.  One  war 
rior  suggested  that  the  hunter  be  set  up  as  a  target  and 
shot  at.  Would  he  then  be  so  brave? 

But  the  chief  shook  his  head.  That  was  not  game 
enough  sport  for  Blackfeet  warriors.  That  would  be 
letting  a  man  die  passively.  And  how  this  man  could 
fight  if  he  had  an  opportunity !  How  he  could  resist 
torture  if  he  had  any  chance  of  escaping  the  torture ! 

But  Colter  stood  impassive  and  listened.  Doubt 
less  he  regretted  having  left  the  well-defended  bri 
gades  of  the  fur  companies  to  hunt  alone  in  the  wilder 
ness.  But  the  fascination  of  the  wild  life  is  as  a  gam 
bler's  vice — the  more  a  man  has,  the  more  he  wants. 
Had  not  Colter  crossed  the  Eockies  with  Lewis  and 
Clark  and  spent  two  years  in  the  mountain  fastnesses  ? 
Yet  when  he  reached  the  Mandans  on  the  way  home, 
the  revulsion  against  all  the  trammels  of  civilization 
moved  him  so  strongly  that  he  asked  permission  to 
return  to  the  wilderness,  where  he  spent  two  more 
years.  Had  he  not  set  out  for  St.  Louis  a  second  time, 
met  Lisa  coming  up  the  Missouri  with  a  brigade  of 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  1G7 

hunters,  and  for  the  third  time  turned  his  face  to  the 
wilderness  ?  Had  he  not  wandered  with  the  Crows, 
fought  the  Blackfeet,  gone  down  to  St.  Louis,  and  been 
impelled  by  that  strange  impulse  of  adventure  which 
was  to  the  hunter  what  the  instinct  of  migration  is  to 
bird  and  fish  and  buffalo  and  all  wild  things — to  go 
yet  again  to  the  wilderness  ?  Such  was  the  passion  for 
the  wilds  that  ruled  the  life  of  all  free  trappers. 

The  free  trappers  formed  a  class  by  themselves. 

Other  trappers  either  hunted  on  a  salary  of  $200, 
$300,  $400  a  year,  or  on  shares,  like  fishermen  of  the 
Grand  Banks  outfitted  by  "  planters,"  or  like  western 
prospectors  outfitted  by  companies  that  supply  pro 
visions,  boats,  and  horses,  expecting  in  return  the  major 
share  of  profits.  The  free  trappers  fitted  themselves 
out,  owed  allegiance  to  no  man,  hunted  where  and  how 
they  chose,  and  refused  to  carry  their  furs  to  any  fort 
but  the  one  that  paid  the  highest  prices.  For  the 
mangeurs  de  lard,  as  they  called  the  fur  company 
raftsmen,  they  had  a  supreme  contempt.  For  the  meth 
ods  of  the  fur  companies,  putting  rivals  to  sleep  with 
laudanum  or  bullet  and  ever  stirring  the  savages  up  to 
warfare,  the  free  trappers  had  a  rough  and  emphati 
cally  expressed  loathing. 

The  crime  of  corrupting  natives  can  never  be  laid 
to  the  free  trapper.  He  carried  neither  poison,  nor 
what  was  worse  than  poison  to  the  Indian — whisky — 
among  the  native  tribes.  The  free  trapper  lived  on 
good  terms  with  the  Indian,  because  his  safety  de 
pended  on  the  Indian.  Renegades  like  Bird,  the  de 
serter  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  or  Eose,  who 
abandoned  the  Astorians,  or  Beckwourth  of  apocryphal 


168      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

fame,  might  cast  off  civilization  and  become  Indian 
chiefs;  but,  after  all,  these  men  were  not  guilty  of  half 
so  hideous  crimes  as  the  great  fur  companies  of  boasted 
respectability.  Wyeth  of  Boston,  and  Captain  Bonne- 
ville  of  the  army,  whose  underlings  caused  such  mur 
derous  slaughter  among  the  Eoot  Diggers,  were  not 
free  trappers  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term.  Wyeth 
was  an  enthusiast  who  caught  the  fever  of  the  wilds; 
and  Captain  Bonneville,  a  gay  adventurer,  whose  men 
shot  down  more  Indians  in  one  trip  than  all  the  free 
trappers  of  America  shot  in  a  century.  As  for  the  des 
perado  Harvey,  whom  Larpenteur  reports  shooting  In 
dians  like  dogs,  his  crimes  were  committed  under  the 
walls  of  the  American  Fur  Company's  fort.  MacLel- 
lan  and  Crooks  and  John  Day — before  they  joined  the 
Astorians — and  Boone  and  Carson  and  Colter,  are 
names  that  stand  for  the  true  type  of  free  trapper. 

The  free  trapper  went  among  the  Indians  with  no 
defence  but  good  behaviour  and  the  keenness  of  his  wit. 
Whatever  crimes  the  free  trapper  might  be  guilty  of 
towards  white  men,  he  was  guilty  of  few  towards  the 
Indians.  Consequently,  free  trappers  were  all  through 
Minnesota  and  the  region  westward  of  the  Mississippi 
forty  years  before  the  fur  companies  dared  to  venture 
among  the  Sioux.  Fisher  and  Fraser  and  Woods  knew 
the  Upper  Missouri  before  180G ;  and  Brugiere  had  been 
on  the  Columbia  many  years  before  the  Astorians  came 
in  1811. 

One  crime  the  free  trappers  may  be  charged  with — 
a  reckless  waste  of  precious  furs.  The  great  companies 
always  encouraged  the  Indians  not  to  hunt  more  game 
than  they  needed  for  the  season's  support.  And  no  In 
dian  hunter,  uncorrupted  by  white  men,  would  molest 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  169 

game  while  the  mothers  were  with  their  young.  Famine 
had  taught  them  the  punishment  that  follows  reckless 
hunting.  But  the  free  trappers  were  here  to-day  and 
away  to-morrow,  like  a  Chinaman,  to  take  all  they  could 
get  regardless  of  results ;  and  the  results  were  the  rapid 
extinction  of  fur-bearing  game. 

Always  there  were  more  free  trappers  in  the  United 
States  than  in  Canada.  Before  the  union  of  Hudson's 
Bay  and  Nor7  Wester  in  Canada,  all  classes  of  trap 
pers  were  absorbed  by  one  of  the  two  great  companies. 
After  the  union,  when  the  monopoly  enjoyed  by  the 
Hudson's  Bay  did  not  permit  it  literally  to  drive  a  free 
trapper  out,  it  could  always  "  freeze  "  him  out  by  with 
holding  supplies  in  its  great  white  northern  wilder 
nesses,  or  by  refusing  to  give  him  transport.  When  the 
monopoly  passed  away  in  1871,  free  trappers  pressed 
north  from  the  Missouri,  where  their  methods  had  ex 
terminated  game,  and  carried  on  the  same  ruthless 
warfare  on  the  Saskatchewan.  North  of  the  Saskatche 
wan,  where  very  remoteness  barred  strangers  out,  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  still  held  undisputed  sway; 
and  Lord  Strathcona,  the  governor  of  the  company,  was 
able  to  say  only  two  years  ago,  "  the  fur  trade  is  quite 
as  large  as  ever  it  was." 

Among  free  hunters,  Canada  had  only  one  com 
manding  figure — John  Johnston  of  the  Soo,  who  set 
tled  at  La  Pointe  on  Lake  Superior  in  1792,  formed 
league  with  Wabogish,  "  the  White  Fisher,"  and  became 
the  most  famous  trader  of  the  Lakes.  His  life,  too,  was 
almost  as  eventful  as  Colter's.  A  member  of  the  Irish 
nobility,  some  secret  which  he  never  chose  to  reveal 
drove  him  to  the  wilds.  Wabogish,  the  "  White  Fisher," 
had  a  daughter  who  refused  the  wooings  of  all  her 


170  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

tribe's  warriors.  In  vain  Johnston  sued  for  her  hand. 
Old  Wabogish  bade  the  white  man  go  sell  his  Irish  es 
tates  and  prove  his  devotion  by  buying  as  vast  estates 
in  America.  Johnston  took  the  old  chief  at  his  word, 
and  married  the  haughty  princess  of  the  Lake.  When 
the  War  of  1812  set  all  the  tribes  by  the  ears,,  Johnston 
and  his  wife  had  as  thrilling  adventures  as  ever  Colter 
knew  among  the  Blackfeet. 

Many  a  free  trapper,  and  partner  of  the  fur  com 
panies  as  well,  secured  his  own  safety  by  marrying  the 
daughter  of  a  chief,  as  Johnston  had.  These  were  not 
the  lightly-come,  lightly-go  affairs  of  the  vagrant  ad 
venturer.  If  the  husband  had  not  cast  off  civilization 
like  a  garment,  the  wife  had  to  put  it  on  like  a  garment ; 
and  not  an  ill-fitting  garment  either,  when  one  consid 
ers  that  the  convents  of  the  quiet  nuns  dotted  the  wil 
derness  like  oases  in  a  desert  almost  contemporaneous 
with  the  fur  trade.  If  the  trapper  had  not  sunk  to  the 
level  of  the  savages,  the  little  daughter  of  the  chief  was 
educated  by  the  nuns  for  her  new  position.  I  recall 
several  cases  where  the  child  was  sent  across  the  At 
lantic  to  an  English  governess  so  that  the  equality 
would  be  literal  and  not  a  sentimental  fiction.  And  yet, 
on  no  subject  has  the  western  fur  trader  received  more 
persistent  and  unjust  condemnation.  The  heroism  that 
culminated  in  the  union  of  Pocahontas  with  a  noted 
Virginian  won  applause,  and  almost  similar  circum 
stances  dictated  the  union  of  fur  traders  with  the 
daughters  of  Indian  chiefs;  but  because  the  fur  trader 
has  not  posed  as  a  sentimentalist,  he  has  become  more 
or  less  of  a  target  for  the  index  finger  of  the  Pharisee.* 

*  Would  not  such  critics  think  twice  before  passing  judgment 
if  they  recalled  that  General  Parker  was  a  full-blood  Indian ;  that 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  171 

North  of  the  boundary  the  free  trapper  had  small 
chance  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  As  long 
as  the  slow-going  Mackinaw  Company,  itself  chiefly  re 
cruited  from  free  trappers,  ruled  at  the  junction  of  the 
Lakes,  the  free  trappers  held  the  hunting-grounds  of 
the  Mississippi;  but  after  the  Mackinaw  was  absorbed 
by  the  aggressive  American  Fur  Company,  the  free 
hunters  were  pushed  westward.  On  the  Lower  Mis 
souri  competition  raged  from  1810,  so  that  circum 
stances  drove  the  free  trapper  westward  to  the  moun 
tains,  where  he  is  hunting  in  the  twentieth  century  as 
his  prototype  hunted  two  hundred  years  ago. 

In  Canada — of  course  after  1870 — he  entered  the 
mountains  chiefly  by  three  passes:  (1)  Yellow  Head 
Pass  southward  of  the  Athabasca;  (2)  the  narrow  gap 
where  the  Bow  emerges  to  the  plains — that  is,  the  river 
where  the  Indians  found  the  best  wood  for  the  making 
of  bows;  (3)  north  of  the  boundary,  through  that  nar 
row  defile  overtowered  by  the  lonely  flat-crowned  peak 
called  Crowds  Nest  Mountain — that  is,  where  the  fugi 
tive  Crows  took  refuge  from  the  pursuing  Blackfeet. 

if  Johnston  had  not  married  Wabogish's  daughter  and  if  John 
ston's  daughter  had  not  preferred  to  marry  Schoolcraft  instead 
of  going  to  her  relatives  of  the  Irish  nobility,  Longfellow  would 
have  written  no  Hiawatha?  Would  they  not  hesitate  before 
slurring  men  like  Premier  Norquay  of  Manitoba  and  the  famous 
MacKenzies,  those  princes  of  fur  trade  from  St.  Louis  to  the 
Arctic,  and  David  Thompson,  the  great  explorer  ?  Do  they  for 
get  that  Lord  Strathcona,  one  of  the  foremost  peers  of  Britain, 
is  related  to  the  proudest  race  of  plain-rangers  that  ever  scoured 
the  West,  the  Bois-Brules  f  The  writer  knows  the  West  from 
only  fifteen  years  of  life  and  travel  there ;  yet  with  that  imper 
fect  knowledge  cannot  recall  a  single  fur  post  without  some  tra 
dition  of  an  unfamed  Pocahontas. 


172      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

In  the  United  States,  the  free  hunters  also  ap 
proached  the  mountains  by  three  main  routes :  ( 1 )  Up 
the  Platte;  (2)  westward  from  the  Missouri  across  the 
plains ;  (3)  by  the  Three  Forks  of  the  Missouri.  For  in 
stance,  it  was  coming  down  the  Platte  that  poor  Scott's 
canoe  was  overturned,  his  powder  lost,  and  his  rifles 
rendered  useless.  Game  had  retreated  to  the  moun 
tains  with  spring's  advance.  Berries  were  not  ripe  by 
the  time  trappers  were  descending  with  their  winter's 
hunt.  Scott  and  his  famishing  men  could  not  find  edi 
ble  roots.  Each  day  Scott  weakened.  There  was  no 
food.  Finally,  Scott  had  strength  to  go  no  farther. 
His  men  had  found  tracks  of  some  other  hunting  party 
far  to  the  fore.  They  thought  that,  in  any  case,  he 
could  not  live.  What  ought  they  to  do?  Hang  back 
and  starve  with  him,  or  hasten  forward  while  they  had 
strength,  to  the  party  whose  track  they  had  espied?  On 
pretence  of  seeking  roots,  they  deserted  the  helpless 
man.  Perhaps  they  did  not  come  up  with  the  advance 
party  till  they  were  sure  that  Scott  must  have  died;  for 
they  did  not  go  back  to  his  aid.  The  next  spring  when 
these  same  hunters  went  up  the  Platte.,  they  found  the 
skeleton  of  poor  Scott  sixty  miles  from  the  place  where 
they  had  left  him.  The  terror  that  spurred  the  emaci 
ated  man  to  drag  himself  all  this  weary  distance  can 
barely  be  conceived;  but  such  were  the  fearful  odds 
taken  by  every  free  trapper  who  went  up  the  Platte, 
across  the  parched  plains,  or  to  the  head  waters  of  the 
Missouri. 

The  time  for  the  free  trappers  to  go  out  was,  in 
Indian  language,  "  when  the  leaves  began  to  fall/'  If 
a  mighty  hunter  like  Colter,  the  trapper  was  to  the 
savage  "  big  Indian  me  " ;  if  only  an  ordinary  vagrant 


JOHN  COLTER-FREE  TRAPPER  173 

of  woods  and  streams,  the  white  man  was  "  big  knife 
you/'  in  distinction  to  the  red  man  carrying  only  primi 
tive  weapons.  Very  often  the  free  trapper  slipped  away 
from  the  fur  post  secretly,  or  at  night ;  for  there  were 
questions  of  licenses  which  he  disregarded,  knowing 
well  that  the  buyer  of  his  furs  would  not  inform  for 
fear  of  losing  the  pelts.  Also  and  more  important  in 
counseling  caution,  the  powerful  fur  companies  had 
spies  on  the  watch  to  dog  the  free  trapper  to  his  hunt 
ing-grounds;  and  rival  hunters  would  not  hesitate  to 
bribe  the  natives  with  a  keg  of  rum  for  all  the  peltries 
which  the  free  trapper  had  already  bought  by  advancing 
provisions  to  Indian  hunters.  Indeed,  rival  hunters 
have  not  hesitated  to  bribe  the  savages  to  pillage  and 
murder  the  free  trapper;  for  there  was  no  law  in  the 
fur  trading  country,  and  no  one  to  ask  what  became  of 
the  free  hunter  who  went  alone  into  the  wilderness  and 
never  returned. 

Going  out  alone,  or  with  only  one  partner,  the  free 
hunter  encumbered  himself  with  few  provisions.  Two 
dollars  worth  of  tobacco  would  buy  a  thousand  pounds 
of  "  jerked  "  buffalo  meat,  and  a  few  gaudy  trinkets  for 
a  squaw  all  the  pemmican  white  men  could  use. 

Going  by  the  river  routes,  four  days  out  from  St. 
Louis  brought  the  trapper  into  regions  of  danger.  In 
dian  scouts  hung  on  the  watch  among  the  sedge  of  the 
river  bank.  One  thin  line  of  upcurling  smoke,  or  a 
piece  of  string — babiche  (leather  cord,  called  by  the  In 
dians  assapapish) — fluttering  from  a  shrub,  or  little 
sticks  casually  dropped  on  the  river  bank  pointing  one 
way,  all  were  signs  that  told  of  marauding  bands. 
Some  birch  tree  was  notched  with  an  Indian  cipher — 
a  hunter  had  passed  that  way  and  claimed  the  bark  for 


OFTSE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


174      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

his  next  year's  canoe.  Or  the  mark  might  be  on  a 
cottonwood — some  man  wanted  this  tree  for  a  dugout. 
Perhaps  a  stake  stood  with  a  mark  at  the  entrance  to 
a  beaver-marsh — some  hunter  had  found  this  ground 
first  and  warned  all  other  trappers  off  by  the  code  of 
wilderness  honour.  Notched  tree-trunks  told  of  some 
runner  gone  across  country,  blazing  a  trail  by  which 
he  could  return.  Had  a  piece  of  fungus  been  torn  from 
a  hemlock  log?  There  were  Indians  near,  and  the 
squaw  had  taken  the  thing  to  whiten  leather.  If  a  sud 
den  puff  of  black  smoke  spread  out  in  a  cone  above  some 
distant  tree,  it  was  an  ominous  sign  to  the  trapper. 
The  Indians  had  set  fire  to  the  inside  of  a  punky  trunk 
and  the  shooting  flames  were  a  rallying  call. 

In  the  most  perilous  regions  the  trapper  travelled 
only  after  nightfall  with  muffled  paddles — that  is, 
muffled  where  the  handle  might  strike  the  gunwale. 
Camp-fires  warned  him  which  side  of  the  river  to  avoid ; 
and  often  a  trapper  slipping  past  under  the  shadow 
of  one  bank  saw  hobgoblin  figures  dancing  round 
the  flames  of  the  other  bank — Indians  celebrating  their 
scalp  dance.  In  these  places  the  white  hunter  ate  cold 
meals  to  avoid  lighting  a  fire ;  or  if  he  lighted  a  fire, 
after  cooking  his  meal  he  withdrew  at  once  and  slept 
at  a  distance  from  the  light  that  might  betray  him. 

The  greatest  risk  of  travelling  after  dark  during  the 
spring  floods  arose  from  what  the  voyageurs  called  em- 
barras — trees  torn  from  the  banks  sticking  in  the  soft 
bottom  like  derelicts  with  branches  to  entangle  the 
trapper's  craft;  but  the  embarras  often  befriended  the 
solitary  white  man.  Usually  he  slept  on  shore  rolled 
in  a  buffalo-robe;  but  if  Indian  signs  were  fresh,  he 
moored  his  canoe  in  mid-current  and  slept  under  hiding 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  175 

of  the  drift-wood.  Friendly  Indians  did  not  conceal 
themselves,,  but  came  to  the  river  bank  waving  a  buf 
falo-robe  and  spreading  it  out  to  signal  a  welcome  to 
the  white  man;  when  the  trapper  would  go  ashore, 
whiff  pipes  with  the  chiefs  and  perhaps  spend  the  night 
listening  to  the  tales  of  exploits  which  each  notch  on 
the  calumet  typified.  Incidents  that  meant  nothing  to 
other  men  were  full  of  significance  to  the  lone  voyayeur 
through  hostile  lands.  Always  the  spring  floods  drift 
ed  down  numbers  of  dead  buffalo ;  and  the  carrion  birds 
sat  on  the  trees  of  the  shore  with  their  wings  spread 
out  to  dry  in  the  sun.  The  sudden  flacker  of  a  rising 
flock  betrayed  something  prowling  in  ambush  on  the 
bank;  so  did  the  splash  of  a  snake  from  overhanging 
branches  into  the  water. 

Different  sorts  of  dangers  beset  the  free  trapper 
crossing  the  plains  to  the  mountains.  The  fur  com 
pany  brigades  always  had  escort  of  armed  guard  and 
provision  packers.  The  free  trappers  went  alone  or  in 
pairs,  picketing  horses  to  the  saddle  overlaid  with  a 
buffalo-robe  for  a  pillow,  cooking  meals  on  chip  fires, 
using  a  slow-burning  wormwood  bark  for  matches,  and 
trusting  their  horses  or  dog  to  give  the  alarm  if  the 
bands  of  coyotes  hovering  through  the  night  dusk  ap 
proached  too  near.  On  the  high  rolling  plains,  hostiles 
could  be  descried  at  a  distance,  coming  over  the  hori 
zon  head  and  top  first  like  the  peak  of  a  sail,  or  emer 
ging  from  the  "  coolies  " — dried  sloughs — like  wolves 
from  the  earth.  Enemies  could  be  seen  soon  enough  ; 
but  where  could  the  trapper  hide  on  bare  prairie  ?  He 
didn't  attempt  to  hide.  He  simply  set  fire  to  the 
prairie  and  took  refuge  on  the  lee  side.  That  device 
failing,  he  was  at  his  enemies'  mercy. 


176  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

On  the  plains,  the  greatest  danger  was  from  lack 
of  water.  At  one  season  the  trapper  might  know  where 
to  find  good  camping  streams.  The  next  year  when  he 
came  to  those  streams  they  were  dry. 

"  After  leaving  the  buffalo  meadows  a  dreadful  scarcity  of 
water  ensued,"  wrote  Charles  MacKenzie,  of  the  famous  Mac- 
Kenzie  clan.  He  was  journeying  north  from  the  Missouri.  * '  We 
had  to  alter  our  course  and  steer  to  a  distant  lake.  When  we 
got  there  we  found  the  lake  dry.  However,  we  dug  a  pit  which 
produced  a  kind  of  stinking  liquid  which  we  all  drank.  It  was 
salt  and  bitter,  caused  an  inflammation  of  the  mouth,  left  a 
disagreeable  roughness  of  the  throat,  and  seemed  to  increase 
our  thirst.  .  .  .  We  passed  the  night  under  great  uneasiness. 
Next  day  we  continued  our  journey,  but  not  a  drop  of  water 
was  to  be  found,  .  .  .  and  our  distress  became  insupportable. 
.  .  .  All  at  once  our  horses  became  so  unruly  that  we  could  not 
manage  them.  We  observed  that  they  showed  an  inclination 
towards  a  hill  which  was  close  by.  It  struck  me  that  they 
might  have  scented  water.  ...  I  ascended  to  the  top,  where, 
to  my  great  joy,  I  discovered  a  small  pool.  .  .  .  My  horse 
plunged  in  before  I  could  prevent  him,  .  .  .  and  all  the  horses 
drank  to  excess." 

"  The  plains  across  " — which  was  a  western  expres 
sion  meaning  the  end  of  that  part  of  the  trip — there 
rose  on  the  west  rolling  foothills  and  dark  peaked  pro 
files  against  the  sky  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  from 
gray  cloud  banks.  These  were  the  mountains ;  and  the 
real  hazards  of  free  trapping  began.  No  use  to  follow 
the  easiest  passes  to  the  most  frequented  valleys.  The 
fur  company  brigades  marched  through  these,  sweep 
ing  up  game  like  a  forest  fire;  so  the  free  trappers 
sought  out  the  hidden,  inaccessible  valleys,  going  where 
neither  pack  horse  nor  canot  a  lee  d'esturgeon  could 
follow.  How  did  they  do  it?  Very  much  the  way; 


JOHN  COLTER-FREE  TRAPPER  177 

Simon  Frasers  hunters  crawled  down  the  river-course 
named  after  him.  "  Our  shoes/'  said  one  trapper,  "  did 
not  last  a  single  day/' 

"  We  had  to  plunge  our  daggers  into  the  ground,  .  .  .  other 
wise  we  would  slide  into  the  river,"  wrote  Fraser.  "We  cut 
steps  into  the  declivity,  fastened  a  line  to  the  front  of  the  canoe, 
with  which  some  of  the  men  ascended  in  order  to  haul  it  up. 
.  .  .  Our  lives  hung,  as  it  were,  upon  a  thread,  as  the  failure 
of  the  line  or  the  false  step  of  the  man  might  have  hurled  us  into 
eternity.  .  .  .  We  had  to  pass  where  no  human  being  should 
venture.  .  .  .  Steps  were  formed  like  a  ladder  on  the  shrouds  of 
a  ship,  by  poles  hanging  to  one  another  and  crossed  at  certain 
distances  with  twigs,  the  whole  suspended  from  the  top  to  the 
foot  of  immense  precipices,  and  fastened  at  both  extremities  to 
stones  and  trees." 

He  speaks  of  the  worst  places  being  where  these 
frail  swaying  ladders  led  up  to  the  overhanging  ledge 
of  a  shelving  precipice. 

Such  were  the  very  real  adventures  of  the  trapper's 
life,  a  life  whose  fascinations  lured  John  Colter  from 
civilization  to  the  wilds  again  and  again  till  he  came 
back  once  too  often  and  found  himself  stripped,  help 
less,  captive,  in  the  hands  of  the  Blackfeet. 

It  would  be  poor  sport  torturing  a  prisoner  who 
showed  no  more  fear  than  this  impassive  white  man 
coolly  listening  and  waiting  for  them  to  compass  his 
death.  So  the  chief  dismissed  the  suggestion  to  shoot 
at  their  captive  as  a  target.  Suddenly  the  Blackfoot 
leader  turned  to  Colter.  "  Could  the  white  man  run 
fast  ?  "  he  asked.  In  a  flash  Colter  guessed  what  was 
to  be  his  fate.  He,  the  hunter,  was  to  be  hunted.  No, 
he  cunningly  signalled,  he  was  only  a  poor  runner. 

Bidding  his  warriors  stand  still,  the  chief  roughly 


178      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

led  Colter  out  three  hundred  yards.  Then  he  set  his 
captive  free,  and  the  exultant  shriek  of  the  running 
warriors  told  what  manner  of  sport  this  was  to  be.  It 
was  a  race  for  life. 

The  white  man  shot  out  with  all  the  power  of 
muscles  hard  as  iron-wood  and  tense  as  a  bent  bow. 
Fear  winged  the  man  running  for  his  life  to  outrace  the 
winged  arrows  coming  from  the  shouting  warriors  three 
hundred  yards  behind.  Before  him  stretched  a  plain 
six  miles  wide,  the  distance  he  had  so  thoughtlessly 
paddled  between  the  rampart  walls  of  the  canon  but 
a  few  hours  ago.  At  the  Jefferson  was  a  thick  forest 
growth  where  a  fugitive  might  escape.  Somewhere 
along  the  Jefferson  was  his  own  hidden  cabin. 

Across  this  plain  sped  Colter,  pursued  by  a  band 
of  six  hundred  shrieking  demons.  Not  one  breath  did 
he  waste  looking  back  over  his  shoulder  till  he  was 
more  than  half-way  across  the  plain,  and  could  tell 
from  the  fading  uproar  that  he  was  outdistancing  his 
hunters.  Perhaps  it  was  the  last  look  of  despair;  but 
it  spurred  the  jaded  racer  to  redoubled  efforts.  All 
the  Indians  had  been  left  to  the  rear  but  one,  who  was 
only  a  hundred  yards  behind. 

There  was,  then,  a  racing  chance  of  escape !  Colter 
let  out  in  a  burst  of  renewed  speed  that  brought  blood 
gushing  over  his  face,  while  the  cactus  spines  cut  his 
naked  feet  like  knives.  The  river  was  in  sight.  A 
mile  more,  he  would  be  in  the  wood !  But  the  Indian 
behind  was  gaining  at  every  step.  Another  backward 
look  !  The  savage  was  not  thirty  yards  away !  He  had 
poised  his  spear  to  launch  it  in  Colter's  back,  when  the 
white  man  turned  fagged  and  beaten,  threw  up  his  arms 
and  stopped ! 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  179 

This  is  an  Indian  ruse  to  arrest  the  pursuit  of  a 
wild  beast.  By  force  of  habit  it  stopped  the  Indian  too, 
and  disconcerted  him  so  that  instead  of  launching  his 
spear,  he  fell  flat  on  his  face,  breaking  the  shaft  in  his 
hand.  With  a  leap,  Colter  had  snatched  up  the  broken 
point  and  pinned  the  savage  through  the  body  to  the 
earth. 

That  intercepted  the  foremost  of  the  other  warriors, 
who  stopped  to  rescue  their  brave  and  gave  Colter  time 
to  reach  the  river. 

In  he  plunged,  fainting  and  dazed,  swimming  for  an 
island  in  mid-current  where  driftwood  had  formed  a 
sheltered  raft.  Under  this  he  dived,  corning  up  with 
his  head  among  branches  of  trees. 

All  that  day  the  Blackfeet  searched  the  island  for 
Colter,  running  from  log  to  log  of  the  drift;  but  the 
close-grown  brushwood  hid  the  white  man.  At  night 
he  swam  down-stream  like  any  other  hunted  animal 
that  wants  to  throw  pursuers  off  the  trail,  went  ashore 
and  struck  across  country,  seven  days'  journey  for  the 
Missouri  Company's  fort  on  the  Bighorn  Eiver. 

Naked  and  unarmed,  he  succeeded  in  reaching  the 
distant  fur  post,  having  subsisted  entirely  on  roots  and 
berries. 

Chittenden  says  that  poor  Colter's  adventure  only 
won  for  him  in  St.  Louis  the  reputation  of  a  colossal 
liar.  But  traditions  of  his  escape  were  current  among 
all  hunters  and  Indian  tribes  on  the  Missouri,  so  that 
when  Bradbury,  the  English  scientist,  went  west  with 
the  Astorians  in  1811,  he  sifted  the  matter,  accepted  it 
as  truth,  and  preserved  the  episode  for  history  in  a 


180  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

small-type  foot-note  to  his  book  published  in  London 
in  1817. 

Two  other  adventures  are  on  record  similar  to  Col 
ter's:  one  of  Oskononton's  escape  by  diving  under  a 
raft,  told  in  Boss's  Fur  Hunters;  the  other  of  a  poor 
Indian  fleeing  up  the  Ottawa  from  pursuing  Iroquois  of 
the  Five  Nations  and  diving  under  the  broken  bottom 
of  an  old  beaver-dam,  told  in  the  original  Jesuit  Rela 
tions. 

And  yet  when  the  Astorians  went  up  the  Missouri 
a  few  years  later,  Colter  could  scarcely  resist  the  im 
pulse  to  go  a  fourth  time  to  the  wilds.  But  fascina 
tions  stronger  than  the  wooings  of  the  wilds  had  come 
to  his  life — he  had  taken  to  himself  a  bride. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

THE   GREATEST   FUR   COMPANY   OF   THE   WORLD 

IN  the  history  of  the  world  only  one  corporate  com 
pany  has  maintained  empire  over  an  area  as  large  as 
Europe.  Only  one  corporate  company  has  lived  up  to 
its  constitution  for  nearly  three  centuries.  Only  one 
corporate  company's  sway  has  been  so  beneficent  that 
its  profits  have  stood  in  exact  proportion  to  the  well- 
being  of  its  subjects.  Indeed,  few  armies  can  boast  a 
rank  and  file  of  men  who  never  once  retreated  in  three 
hundred  years,  whose  lives,  generation  after  genera 
tion,  were  one  long  bivouac  of  hardship,  of  danger,  of 
ambushed  death,  of  grim  purpose,  of  silent  achieve 
ment. 

Such  was  the  company  of  "  Adventurers  of  England 
Trading  into  Hudson's  Bay,"  as  the  charter  of  1670 
designated  them.*  Such  is  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
to-day  still  trading  with  savages  in  the  white  wilder 
ness  of  the  north  as  it  was  when  Charles  II  granted 
a  royal  charter  for  the  fur  trade  to  his  cousin  Prince 
Rupert. 

Governors  and  chief  factors  have  changed  with  the 

*  The  spelling  of  the  name  with  an  apostrophe  in  the  charter 
seems  to  be  the  only  reason  for  the  company's  name  always  hav 
ing  the  apostrophe,  whereas  the  waters  are  now  known  simply  as 
Hudson  Bay. 

181 


182  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

changing  centuries;  but  the  character  of  the  company's 
personnel  has  never  changed.  Prince  Bupert,  the  first 
governor,  was  succeeded  by  the  Duke  of  York  (James 
II);  and  the  royal  governor  by  a  long  line  of  distin 
guished  public  men  down  to  Lord  Strathcona,  the  pres 
ent  governor,  and  C.  C.  Chipman,  the  chief  commis 
sioner  or  executive  officer.  All  have  been  men  of  noted 
achievement,  often  in  touch  with  the  Crown,  always 
with  that  passion  for  executive  and  mastery  of  difficulty 
which  exults  most  when  the  conflict  is  keenest. 

Pioneers  face  the  unknown  when  circumstances 
push  them  into  it.  Adventurers  rush  into  the  un 
known  for  the  zest  of  conquering  it.  It  has  been  to 
the  adventuring  class  that  fur  traders  have  belonged. 

Eadisson  and  Groseillers,  the  two  Frenchmen  who 
first  brought  back  word  of  the  great  wealth  in  furs 
round  the  far  northern  sea,  had  been  gentlemen  ad 
venturers — "  rascals "  their  enemies  called  them. 
Prince  Eupert,  who  leagued  himself  with  the  French 
men  to  obtain  a  charter  for  his  fur  trade,  had  been 
an  adventurer  of  the  high  seas — "  pirate  "  we  would 
say — long  before  he  became  first  governor  of  the  Hud 
son's  Bay  Company.  And  the  Duke  of  Marlborough, 
the  company's  third  governor,  was  as  great  an  adven 
turer  as  he  was  a  general. 

Latterly  the  word  "  adventurer  "  has  fallen  in  such 
evil  repute,  it  may  scarcely  be  applied  to  living  actors. 
But  using  it  in  the  old-time  sense  of  militant  hero, 
what  cavalier  of  gold  braid  and  spurs  could  be  more  of 
an  adventurer  than  young  Donald  Smith  who  traded  in 
the  desolate  wastes  of  Labrador,  spending  seventeen 
years  in  the  hardest  field  of  the  fur  company,  tramping 
on  snow-shoes  half  the  width  of  a  continent,  camping 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    183 

where  night  overtook  him  under  blanketing  of  snow 
drifts,  who  rose  step  by  step  from  trader  on  the  east 
coast  to  commissioner  in  the  west?  And  this  Donald 
Smith  became  Lord  Strathcona,  the  governor  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company. 

Men  bold  in  action  and  conservative  in  traditions 
have  ruled  the  company.  The  governor  resident  in 
England  is  now  represented  by  the  chief  commissioner, 
who  in  turn  is  represented  at  each  of  the  many  inland 
forts  by  a  chief  factor  of  the  district.  Nominally,  the 
fur-trader's  northern  realm  is  governed  by  the  Parlia 
ment  of  Canada.  Virtually,  the  chief  factor  rules  as 
autocratically  to-day  as  he  did  before  the  Canadian 
Government  took  over  the  proprietary  rights  of  the  fur 
company. 

How  did  these  rulers  of  the  wilds,  these  princes  of 
the  fur  trade,  live  in  lonely  forts  and  mountain  fast 
nesses?  Visit  one  of  the  northern  forts  as  it  exists 
to-day. 

The  colder  the  climate,  the  finer  the  fur.  The  far 
ther  north  the  fort,  the  more  typical  it  is  of  the  fur- 
trader's  realm. 

For  six,  seven,  eight  months  of  the  year,  the  fur- 
trader's  world  is  a  white  wilderness  of  snow;  snow 
water-waved  by  winds  that  sweep  from  the  pole;  snow 
drifted  into  ramparts  round  the  fort  stockades  till  the 
highest  picket  sinks  beneath  the  white  flood  and  the 
corner  bastions  are  almost  submerged  and  the  entrance 
to  the  central  gate  resembles  the  cutting  of  a  railway 
tunnel;  snow  that  billows  to  the  unbroken  reaches  of 
the  circling  sky-line  like  a  white  sea.  East,  frost-mist 
hides  the  low  horizon  in  clouds  of  smoke,  for  the  sun 
which  rises  from  the  east  in  other  climes  rises  from 


184  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

the  south-east  here ;  and  until  the  spring  equinox,  bring 
ing  summer  with  a  flood-tide  of  thaw,  gray  darkness 
hangs  in  the  east  like  a  fog.  South,  the  sun  moves 
across  the  snowy  levels  in  a  wheel  of  fire,  for  it  has 
scarcely  risen  full  sphered  above  the  sky-line  before  it 
sinks  again  etching  drift  and  tip  of  half-buried  brush 
in  long  lonely  fading  shadows.  The  west  shimmers 
in  warm  purplish  grays,  for  the  moist  Chinook  winds 
come  over  the  mountains  melting  the  snow  by  magic. 
North,  is  the  cold  steel  of  ice  by  day;  and  at  night 
Northern  Lights  darting  through  the  polar  dark  like 
burnished  spears. 

Christmas  day  ic  welcomed  at  the  northern  fur 
posts  by  a  firing  of  cannon  from  the  snow-muffled  bas 
tions.  Before  the  stars  have  faded,  chapel  services  be 
gin.  Frequently  on  either  Christmas  or  New  Year's 
day,  a  grand  feast  is  given  the  tawny-skinned  habitues 
of  the  fort,  who  come  shuffling  to  the  main  mess-room 
with  no  other  announcement  than  the  lifting  of  the 
latch,  and  billet  themselves  on  the  hospitality  of  a  host 
that  has  never  turned  hungry  Indians  from  its  doors. 

For  reasons  well-known  to  the  woodcraftsman,  a 
sudden  lull  falls  on  winter  hunting  in  December,  and 
all  the  trappers  within  a  week's  journey  from  the  fort, 
all  the  half-breed  guides  who  add  to  the  instinct  of 
native  craft  the  reasoning  of  the  white,  all  the  Indian' 
hunters  ranging  river-course  and  mountain  have  come 
by  snow-shoes  and  dog  train  to  spend  festive  days  at  the 
fort.  A  great  jangling  of  bells  announces  the  huskies 
(dog  trains)  scampering  over  the  crusted  snow-drifts. 
A  babel  of  barks  and  curses  follows,  for  the  huskies 
celebrate  their  arrival  by  tangling  themselves  up  in  their 
harness  and  enjoying  a  free  fight. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    185 

Dogs  unharnessed,,  in  troop  the  trappers  to  the  ban 
quet-hall,  flinging  packs  of  tightly  roped  peltries  down 
promiscuously,  to  be  sorted  next  day.  One  Indian  en 
ters  just  as  he  has  left  the  hunting-field,  clad  from 
head  to  heel  in  white  caribou  with  the  antlers  left  on 
the  capote  as  a  decoy.  His  squaw  has  togged  out  for 
the  occasion  in  a  comical  medley  of  brass  bracelets  and 
finger-rings,  with  a  bear's  claw  necklace  and  ermine  ruff 
which  no  city  connoisseur  could  possibly  mistake  for 
rabbit.  If  a  daughter  yet  remain  unappropriated  she 
will  display  the  gayest  attire — red  flannel  galore,  red 
shawl,  red  scarf,  with  perhaps  an  apron  of  white  fox- 
skin  and  moccasins  garnished  in  coloured  grasses.  The 
braves  outdo  even  a  vain  young  squaw.  Whole  fox, 
mink,  or  otter  skins  have  been  braided  to  the  end 
of  their  hair,  and  hang  down  in  two  plaits  to  the 
floor.  Whitest  of  buckskin  has  been  ornamented  with 
brightest  of  beads,  and  over  all  hangs  the  gaudiest  of 
blankets,  it  may  be  a  musk-ox-skin  with  the  feats  of 
the  warrior  set  forth  in  rude  drawings  on  the  smooth 
side. 

Children  and  old  people,  too,  come  to  the  feast,  for 
the  Indian's  stomach  is  the  magnet  that  draws  his  soul. 
Grotesque  little  figures  the  children  are,  with  men's 
trousers  shambling  past  their  heels,  rabbit-skin  coats 
.  with  the  fur  turned  in,  and  on  top  of  all  some  old  stove- 
1  pipe  hat  or  discarded  busby  coming  half-way  down  to 
the  urchin's  neck.  The  old  people  have  more  resem 
blance  to  parchment  on  gnarled  sticks  than  to  human 
beings.  They  shiver  under  dirty  blankets  with  every 
sort  of  cast-off  rag  tied  about  their  limbs,  hobbling 
lame  from  frozen  feet  or  rheumatism,  mumbling  tooth 
less  requests  for  something  to  eat  or  something  to  wear, 


186      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

for  tobacco,  the  solace  of  Indian  woes,  or  what  is  next 
best — tea. 

Among  so  many  guests  are  many  needs.  One  half- 
breed  from  a  far  wintering  outpost,  where  perhaps  a 
white  man  and  this  guide  are  living  in  a  chinked  shack 
awaiting  a  hunting  party's  return,  arrives  at  the  fort 
with  frozen  feet.  Little  Labree's  feet  must  be  thawed 
out,  and  sometimes  little  Labree  dies  under  the  process, 
leaving  as  a  legacy  to  the  chief  factor  the  death-bed 
pledge  that  the  corpse  be  taken  to  a  distant  tribal  bury- 
ing-ground.  And  no  matter  how  inclement  the  winter, 
the  chief  factor  keeps  his  pledge,  for  the  integrity  of  a 
promise  is  the  only  law  in  the  fur-trader's  realm.  Special 
attentions,  too,  must  be  paid  those  old  retainers  who 
have  acted  as  mentors  of  the  fort  in  times  of  trouble. 

A  few  years  ago  it  would  not  have  been  safe  to 
give  this  treat  inside  the  fort  walls.  Rations  would 
have  been  served  through  loop-holes  and  the  feast  held 
outside  the  gates;  but  so  faithfully  have  the  Indians 
become  bound  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  there 
are  not  three  forts  in  the  fur  territory  where  Indians 
must  be  excluded. 

Of  the  feast  little  need  be  said.  Like  the  camel, 
the  Indian  lays  up  store  for  the  morrow,  judging  from 
his  capacity  for  weeks  of  morrows.  His  benefactor  no 
more  dines  with  him  than  a  plantation  master  of  the 
South  would  have  dined  with  feasting  slaves.  Else 
where  a  bell  calls  the  company  officers  to  breakfast  at 
7.30,  dinner  at  1,  supper  at  7.  Officers  dine  first,  white 
hunters  and  trappers  second,  that  difference  between 
master  and  servant  being  maintained  which  is  part  of 
the  company's  almost  military  discipline.  In  the  large 
forts  are  libraries,  whither  resort  the  officers  for  the 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    187 

long  winter  nights.  But  over  the  feast  wild  hilarity 
reigns. 

A  French-Canadian  fiddler  strikes  up  a  tuneless  jig 
that  sets  the  Indians  pounding  the  floor  in  figureless 
dances  with  moccasined  heels  till  midday  glides  into 
midnight  and  midnight  to  morning.  I  remember  hear 
ing  of  one  such  midday  feast  in  Ked  Kiver  settlement 
that  prolonged  itself  past  four  of  the  second  morning. 
Against  the  walls  sit  old  folks  spinning  yarns  of  the 
past.  There  is  a  print  of  Sir  George  Simpson  behind 
one  raconteur's  head.  Ah!  yes,  the  oldest  guides  all 
remember  Sir  George,  though  half  a  century  has  passed 
since  his  day.  He  was  the  governor  who  travelled  with 
flags  flying  from  every  prow,  and  cannon  firing  when  he 
left  the  forts,  and  men  drawn  up  in  procession  like 
soldiers  guarding  an  emperor  when  he  entered  the  fur 
posts  with  coureurs  and  all  the  flourish  of  royal  state. 
Then  some  story-teller  recalls  how  he  has  heard  the  old 
guides  tell  of  the  imperious  governor  once  provoking 
personal  conflict  with  an  equally  imperious  steersman, 
who  first  ducked  the  governor  into  a  lake  they  were 
traversing  and  then  ducked  into  the  lake  himself  to 
rescue  the  governor. 

And  there  is  a  crucifix  high  on  the  wall  left  by 
Pere  Lacomb  the  last  time  the  famous  missionary  to 
the  red  men  of  the  Far  North  passed  this  way;  and 
every  Indian  calls  up  some  kindness  done,  some  sacri 
fice  by  Father  Lacomb.  On  the  gun-rack  are  old  mus 
kets  and  Indian  masks  and  scalp-locks,  bringing  back 
the  days  when  Eussian  traders  instigated  a  massacre 
at  this  fort  and  when  white  traders  flew  at  each  other's 
throats  as  Nor7  Westers  struggled  with  Hudson's  Bay 
for  supremacy  in  the  fur  trade. 


188  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

"  Ah,  oui,  those  white  men,  they  were  brave  fight 
ers,  they  did  not  know  how  to  stop.  Mais,  sacre,  they 
were  fools,  those  white  men  after  all !  Instead  of 
hiding  in  ambush  to  catch  the  foe,  those  white  men 
measured  off  paces,  stood  up  face  to  face  and  fired 
blank — oui — fired  blank !  Ugh !  Of  course,  one  fool 
he  was  kill'  and  the  other  fool,  most  like,  he  was 
wound' !  Ugh,  by  Gar !  What  Indian  would  have  so 
little  sense  ?  "  * 

Of  hunting  tales,  the  Indian  store  is  exhaustless. 
That  enormous  bear-skin  stretched  to  four  pegs  on  the 
wall  brings  up  Montagnais,  the  Noseless  One,  who  still 
lives  on  Peace  River  and  once  slew  the  largest  bear 
ever  killed  in  the  Eockies,  returning  to  this  very  fort 
with  one  hand  dragging  the  enormous  skin  and  the 
other  holding  the  place  which  his  nose  no  longer 
graced. 

"  Montagnais  ?  Ah,  bien  messieur !  Montagnais, 
he  brave  man  !  Venez  ici — bien — so — I  tole  you  'bout 
heem,"  begins  some  French-Canadian  trapper  with  a 
strong  tinge  of  Indian  blood  in  his  swarthy  skin.  "  Bi- 
gosh !  He  brave  man !  I  tole  you  'bout  dat  happen ! 
Montagnais,  he  go  stumble  t'rough  snow — how  you  call 
dat  ? — hill,  steep — steep  !  Oui,  by  Gar  !  dat  vas  steep 
hill !  de  snow,  she  go  slide,  slide,  lak'  de — de  gran' 
rapeed,  see  ? "  emphasizing  the  snow-slide  with  illus 
trative  gesture.  "  Bien,  done !  Mais,  Montagnais,  he 
stick  gun-stock  in  de  snow  stop  heem  fall — so — see? 
Tonnerre!  Bigosh!  for  sure  she  go  off  wan  beeg  bang! 
Sacre!  She  make  so  much  noise  she  wake  wan  beeg 

*  To  the  Indian  mind  the  hand-to-hand  duels  between  white 
traders  were  incomprehensible  pieces  of  folly. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    189 

oP  bear  sleep  in  snow.  Montagnais,  he  tumble  on  hees 
back !  Mais,  messieur,  de  bear — diable !  'fore  Mon- 
tagnais  wink  hees  eye  de  bear  jump  on  top  lak'  wan 
beeg  loup-garou !  Montagnais,  he  brave  man — he  not 
scare — he  say  wan  leetle  prayer,  wan  han'  he  cover  his 
eyes  !  Odder  han' — sacre — dat  grab  hees  knife  out  hees 
belt — sz-sz-sz,  messieur.  For  sure  he  feel  her  breat' — 
diable! — for  sure  he  fin'  de  place  her  heart  beat — 
Tonnerre!  Vite!  he  stick  dat  knife  in  straight  up  hees 
wrist,  into  de  heart  dat  bear !  Dat  bes'  t'ing  do — for 
sure  de  leetle  prayer  dat  tole  him  best  t'ing  do !  De 
bear  she  roll  over — over — dead's  wan  stone — c'est  vrai ! 
she  no  mor'  jump  top  Montagnais !  Bien,  ma  frien' ! 
Montagnais,  he  roll  over  too — leetle  bit  scare !  Mais, 
hees  nose !  Ah !  bigosh !  de  bear  she  got  dat ;  dat  all 
nose  he  ever  haf  no  mor' !  C'est  vrai  messieur,  bien !  " 

And  with  a  finishing  flourish  the  story-teller  takes 
to  himself  all  the  credit  of  Montagnais's  heroism. 

But  in  all  the  feasting,  trade  has  not  been  forgot 
ten;  and  as  soon  as  the  Indians  recover  from  post 
prandial  torpor  bartering  begins.  In  one  of  the  ware 
houses  stands  a  trader.  An  Indian  approaches  with  a 
pack  of  peltries  weighing  from  eighty  to  a  hundred 
pounds.  Throwing  it  down,  he  spreads  out  the  contents. 
Of  otter  and  mink  and  pekan  there  will  be  plenty,  for 
these  fish-eaters  are  most  easily  taken  before  midwinter 
frost  has  frozen  the  streams  solid.  In  recent  years 
there  have  been  few  beaver-skins,  a  closed  season  of 
several  years  giving  the  little  rodents  a  chance  to  mul 
tiply.  By  treaty  the  Indian  may  hunt  all  creatures 
of  the  chase  as  long  as  "  the  sun  rises  and  the  rivers 
flow  " ;  but  the  fur-trader  can  enforce  a  closed  season 
by  refusing  to  barter  for  the  pelts.  Of  musk-rat-skins, 


190  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

hundreds  of  thousands  are  carried  to  the  forts  every 
season.  The  little  haycock  houses  of  musk-rats  offer 
the  trapper  easy  prey  when  frost  freezes  the  sloughs, 
shutting  off  retreat  below,  and  heavy  snow-fall  has  not 
yet  hidden  the  little  creatures'  winter  home. 

The  trading  is  done  in  several  ways.  Among  the 
Eskimo,,  whose  arithmetical  powers  seldom  exceed  a 
few  units,  the  trader  holds  up  his  hand  with  one,  two, 
three  fingers  raised,  signifying  that  he  offers  for  the 
skin  before  him  equivalents  in  value  to  one,  two,  three 
prime  beaver.  If  satisfied,  the  Indian  passes  over  the 
furs  and  the  trader  gives  flannel,  beads,  powder,  knives, 
tea,  or  tobacco  to  the  value  of  the  beaver-skins  indicated 
by  the  raised  fingers.  If  the  Indian  demands  more, 
hunter  and  trader  wrangle  in  pantomime  till  com 
promise  is  effected. 

But  always  beaver-skin  is  the  unit  of  coin.  Beaver 
are  the  Indian's  dollars  and  cents,  his  shillings  and 
pence,  his  tokens  of  currency. 

South  of  the  Arctics,  where  native  intelligence  is 
of  higher  grade,  the  beaver  values  are  represented  by 
goose-quills,  small  sticks,  bits  of  shell,  or,  most  com 
mon  of  all,  disks  of  lead,  tea-chests  melted  down, 
stamped  on  one  side  with  the  company  arms,  on  the 
other  with  the  figures  1,  2,  £,  J,  representing  so  much 
value  in  beaver. 

First  of  all,  then,  furs  in  the  pack  must  be  sorted, 
silver  fox  worth  five  hundred  dollars  separated  from 
cross  fox  and  blue  and  white  worth  from  ten  dollars 
down,  according  to  quality,  and  from  common  red  fox 
worth  less.  Twenty  years  ago  it  was  no  unusual  thing 
for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  send  to  England  year 
ly  10,000  cross  fox-skins,  7,000  blue,  100,000  red,  half 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OP  THE  WORLD    191 

a  dozen  silver.  Few  wolf-skins  are  in  the  trapper's 
pack  unless  particularly  fine  specimens  of  brown  arctic 
and  white  arctic,  bought  as  a  curiosity  and  not  for 
value  as  skins.  Against  the  wolf\  the  trapper  wages 
war  as  against  a  pest  that  destroys  other  game,  and  not 
for  its  skin.  Next  to  musk-rat  the  most  plentiful  fur 
taken  by  the  Indian,  though  not  highly  esteemed  by  the 
trader,  will  be  that  of  the  rabbit  or  varying  hare.  Buf 
falo  was  once  the  staple  of  the  hunter.  What  the  buf 
falo  was  the  white  rabbit  is  to-day.  From  it  the  In 
dian  gets  clothing,  tepee  covers,  blankets,  thongs,  food. 
From  it  the  white  man  who  is  a  manufacturer  of  furs 
gets  gray  fox  and  chinchilla  and  seal  in  imitation.  Ex 
cept  one  year  in  seven,  when  a  rabbit  plague  spares  the 
land  by  cutting  down  their  prolific  numbers,  the  vary 
ing  hare  is  plentiful  enough  to  sustain  the  Indian. 

Having  received  so  many  bits  of  lead  for  his  furs, 
the  Indian  goes  to  the  store  counter  where  begins  inter 
minable  dickering.  Montagnais's  squaw  has  only  fifty 
"  beaver  "  coin,  and  her  desires  are  a  hundredfold  what 
those  will  buy.  Besides,  the  copper-skinned  lady  enjoys 
beating  down  prices  and  driving  a  bargain  so  well  that 
she  would  think  the  clerk  a  cheat  if  he  asked  a 
fixed  price  from  the  first.  She  expects  him  to  have  a 
sliding  scale  of  prices  for  his  goods  as  she  has  for  her 
furs.  At  the  termination  of  each  bargain,  so  many 
coins  pass  across  the  counter.  Frequently  an  Indian 
presents  himself  at  the  counter  without  beaver  enough 
to  buy  necessaries.  What  then?  I  doubt  if  in  all  the 
years  of  Hudson's  Bay  Company  rule  one  needy  In 
dian  has  ever  been  turned  away.  The  trader  advances 
what  the  Indian  needs  and  chalks  up  so  many  "  beaver  " 
against  the  trapper's  next  hunt. 


192  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Long  ago,  when  rival  traders  strove  for  the  furs, 
whisky  played  a  disgracefully  prominent  part  in  all 
bartering,,  the  drunk  Indian  being  an  easier  victim  than 
the  sober,  and  the  Indian  mad  with  thirst  for  liquor 
the  most  easily  cajoled  of  all.  But  to-day  when  there 
is  no  competition,  whisky  plays  no  part  whatever. 
Whisky  is  in  the  fort,  so  is  pain  killer,  for  which  the 
Indian  has  as  keen  an  appetite,  both  for  the  exigencies 
of  hazardous  life  in  an  unsparing  climate  beyond  med 
ical  aid;  but  the  first  thing  Hudson's  Bay  traders  did 
in  1885,  when  rebel  Indians  surrounded  the  Saskatche 
wan  forts,  was  to  split  the  casks  and  spill  all  alcohol. 
The  second  thing  was  to  bury  ammunition — showing 
which  influence  they  considered  the  more  dangerous. 

Ermine  is  at  its  best  when  the  cold  is  most  intense, 
the  tawny  weasel  coat  turning  from  fawn  to  yellow, 
from  yellow  to  cream  and  snow-white,  according  to  the 
latitude  north  and  the  season.  Unless  it  is  the  pelt  of 
the  baby  ermine,  soft  as  swan's  down,  tail-tip  jet  as 
onyx,  the  best  ermine  is  not  likely  to  be  in  a  pack 
brought  to  the  fort  as  early  as  Christmas. 

Fox,  lynx,  mink,  marten,  otter,  and  bear,  the  trapper 
can  take  with  steel-traps  of  a  size  varying  with  the 
game,  or  even  with  the  clumsily  constructed  deadfall, 
the  log  suspended  above  the  bait  being  heavy  or  light, 
according  to  the  hunter's  expectation  of  large  or  small 
intruder;  but  the  ermine  with  fur  as  easily  damaged 
as  finest  gauze  must  be  handled  differently. 

Going  the  rounds  of  his  traps,  the  hunter  has  noted 
curious  tiny  tracks  like  the  dots  and  dashes  of  a  tele 
graphic  code.  Here  are  little  prints  slurring  into  one 
another  in  a  dash ;  there,  a  dead  stop,  where  the  quick- 
eared  stoat  has  paused  with  beady  eyes  alert  for  snow- 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD     193 

bird  or  rabbit.  Here,  again,  a  clear  blank  on  the  snow 
where  the  crafty  little  forager  has  dived  below  the  light 
surface  and  wriggled  forward  like  a  snake  to  dart  up 
with  a  plunge  of  fangs  into  the  heart-blood  of  the  un 
wary  snow-bunting.  From  the  length  of  the  leaps,  the 
trapper  judges  the  age  of  the  ermine;  fourteen  inches 
from  nose  to  tail-tip  means  a  full-grown  ermine  with 
hair  too  coarse  to  be  damaged  by  a  snare.  The  man 
suspends  the  noose  of  a  looped  twine  across  the  run 
way  from  a  twig  bent  down  so  that  the  weight  of  the 
ermine  on  the  string  sends  the  twig  springing  back 
with  a  jerk  that  lifts  the  ermine  off  the  ground,  stran 
gling  it  instantly.  Perhaps  on  one  side  of  the  twine 
he  has  left  bait — smeared  grease,  or  a  bit  of  meat. 

If  the  tracks  are  like  the  prints  of  a  baby's  fingers, 
close  and  small,  the  trapper  hopes  to  capture  a  pelt  fit 
for  a  throne  cloak,  the  skin  for  which  the  Louis  of 
France  used  to  pay,  in  modern  money,  from  a  hundred 
dollars  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  The  full-grown 
ermines  will  be  worth  only  some  few  "  beaver  "  at  the 
fort.  Perfect  fur  would  be  marred  by  the  twine  snare, 
so  the  trapper  devises  as  cunning  a  death  for  the  ermine 
as  the  ermine  devises  when  it  darts  up  through  the  snow 
with  its  spear-teeth  clutched  in  the  throat  of  a  poor 
rabbit.  Smearing  his  hunting-knife  with  grease,  he 
lays  it  across  the  track.  The  little  ermine  comes  trot 
ting  in  dots  and  dashes  and  gallops  and  dives  to  the 
knife.  It  smells  the  grease,  and  all  the  curiosity  which 
has  been  teaching  it  to  forage  for  food  since  it  was 
born  urges  it  to  put  out  its  tongue  and  taste.  That 
greasy  smell  of  meat  it  knows;  but  that  frost-silvered 
bit  of  steel  is  something  new.  The  knife  is  frosted  like 
ice.  Ice  the  ermine  has  licked,  so  he  licks  the  knife. 
14 


194 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 


But  alas  for  the  resemblance  between  ice  and  steel! 
Ice  turns  to  water  under  the  warm  tongue;  steel  turns 
to  fire  that  blisters  and  holds  the  foolish  little  stoat  by 
his  inquisitive  tongue  a  hopeless  prisoner  till  the  trapper 
comes.  And  lest  marauding  wolverine  or  lynx  should 
come  first  and  gobble  up  priceless  ermine,  the  trapper 
comes  soon.  And  that  is  the  end  for  the  ermine. 

Before  settlers  invaded  the  valley  of  the  Saskatche 
wan  the  furs  taken  at  a  leading  fort  would  amount  to : 


Bear  of  all  varieties . . .  400 

Ermine,  medium 200 

Blue  fox 4 

Red  fox 91 

Silver  fox 3 

Marten 2,000 

Musk-rat 200,000 

Mink 8,000 

Otter. . .  500 


Skunk 6 

Wolf 100 

Beaver 5,000 

Pekan  (fisher) 50 

Cross  fox 30 

White  fox 400 

Lynx 400 

Wolverine . .  200 


The  value  of  these  furs  in  "  beaver  "  currency  varied 
with  the  fashions  of  the  civilized  world,  with  the  scarci 
ty  or  plenty  of  the  furs,  with  the  locality  of  the  fort. 
Before  beaver  became  so  scarce,  100  beaver  equalled  40 
marten  or  10  otter  or  300  musk-rat;  25  beaver  equalled 
500  rabbit;  1  beaver  equalled  2  white  fox;  and  so  on 
down  the  scale.  But  no  set  table  of  values  can  be  given 
other  than  the  prices  realized  at  the  annual  sale  of 
Hudson's  Bay  furs,  held  publicly  in  London. 

To  understand  the  values  of  these  furs  to  the  In 
dian,  "  beaver  "  currency  must  be  compared  to  merchan 
dise,  one  beaver  buying  such  a  red  handkerchief  as 
trappers  wear  around  their  brows  to  notify  other  hunt 
ers  not  to  shoot;  one  beaver  buys  a  hunting-knife,  two 
an  axe,  from  eight  to  twenty  a  gun  or  rifle,  according 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    195 

to  its  quality.  And  in  one  old  trading  list  I  found — 
vanity  of  vanities — "  one  beaver  equals  looking-glass." 

Trading  over,  the  trappers  disperse  to  their  winter 
hunting-grounds,  which  the  main  body  of  hunters  never 
leaves  from  October,  when  they  go  on  the  fall  hunt,  to 
June,  when  the  long  straggling  brigades  of  canoes  and 
keel  boats  and  pack  horses  and  jolting  ox-carts  come 
back  to  the  fort  with  the  harvest  of  winter  furs. 

Signs  unnoted  by  the  denizens  of  city  serve  to  guide 
the  trappers  over  trackless  wastes  of  illimitable  snow. 
A  whitish  haze  of  frost  may  hide  the  sun,  or  continuous 
snow-fall  blur  every  land-mark.  What  heeds  the  trap 
per  ?  The  slope  of  the  rolling  hills,  the  lie  of  the  frozen 
river-beds,  the  branches  of  underbrush  protruding 
through  billowed  drifts  are  hands  that  point  the  trap 
per's  compass.  For  those  hunters  who  have  gone  west 
ward  to  the  mountains,  the  task  of  threading  pathless 
forest  stillness  is  more  difficult.  At  a  certain  altitude 
in  the  mountains,  much  frequented  by  game  because  un 
disturbed  by  storms,  snow  falls — falls — falls,  without 
ceasing,  heaping  the  pines  with  snow  mushrooms,  blot 
ting  out  the  sun,  cloaking  in  heavy  white  flakes  the 
notched  bark  blazed  as  a  trail,  transforming  the  rus 
tling  green  forests  to  a  silent  spectral  world  without  a 
mark  to  direct  the  hunter.  Here  the  woodcraftsman's 
lore  comes  to  his  aid.  He  looks  to  the  snow-coned  tops 
of  the  pine  trees.  The  tops  of  pine  trees  lean  ever  so 
slightly  towards  the  rising  sun.  With  his  snow-shoes 
he  digs  away  the  snow  at  the  roots  of  trees  to  get  down 
to  the  moss.  Moss  grows  from  the  roots  of  trees  on 
the  shady  side — that  is,  the  north.  And  simplest  of  all, 
demanding  only  that  a  wanderer  use  his  eyes — which 
the  white  man  seldom  does — the  limbs  of  the  northern 


196  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

trees  are  most  numerous  on  the  south.  The  trapper 
may  be  waylaid  by  storms,  or  starved  by  sudden  migra 
tion  of  game  from  the  grounds  to  which  he  has  come, 
or  run  to  earth  by  the  ravenous  timber-wolves  that  pur 
sue  the  dog  teams  for  leagues ;  but  the  trapper  with  In 
dian  blood  in  his  veins  will  not  be  lost. 

One  imminent  danger  is  of  accident  beyond  aid.  A 
young  Indian  hunter  of  Moose  Factory  set  out  with  his 
wife  and  two  children  for  the  winter  hunting-grounds 
in  the  forest  south  of  James  Bay.  To  save  the  daily 
allowance  of  a  fish  for  each  dog,  they  did  not  take  the 
dog  teams.  When  chopping,  the  hunter  injured  his  leg. 
The  wound  proved  stubborn.  Game  was  scarce,  and 
they  had  not  enough  food  to  remain  in  the  lodge. 
Wrapping  her  husband  in  robes  on  the  long  toboggan 
sleigh,  the  squaw  placed  the  younger  child  beside  him 
and  with  the  other  began  tramping  through  the  forest 
drawing  the  sleigh  behind.  The  drifts  were  not  deep 
enough  for  swift  snow-shoeing  over  underbrush,  and 
their  speed  was  not  half  so  speedy  as  the  hunger  that 
pursues  northern  hunters  like  the  Fenris  Wolf  of  Norse 
myth.  The  woman  sank  exhausted  on  the  snow  and 
the  older  boy,  nerved  with  fear,  pushed  on  to  Moose 
Factory  for  help.  Guided  by  the  boy  back  through  the 
forests,  the  fort  people  found  the  hunter  dead  in  the 
sleigh,  the  mother  crouched  forward  unconscious  from 
cold,  stripped  of  the  clothing  which  she  had  wrapped 
round  the  child  taken  in  her  arms  to  warm  with  her 
own  body.  The  child  was  alive  and  well.  The  fur 
traders  nursed  the  woman  back  to  life,  though  she 
looked  more  like  a  withered  creature  of  eighty  than  a 
woman  barely  in  her  twenties.  She  explained  with  a 
simple  unconsciousness  of  heroism  that  the  ground  had 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD     197 

been  too  hard  for  her  to  bury  her  husband,  and  she  was 
afraid  to  leave  the  body  and  go  on  to  the  fort  lest  the 
wolves  should  molest  the  dead.* 

The  arrival  of  the  mail  packet  is  one  of  the  most 
welcome  breaks  in  the  monotony  of  life  at  the  fur  post. 
When  the  mail  comes,  all  white  habitants  of  the  fort 
takes  a  week's  holidays  to  read  letters  and  news  of  the 
outside  world. 

Railways  run  from  Lake  Superior  to  the  Pacific; 
but  off  the  line  of  railways  mail  is  carried  as  of  old. 
In  summer-time  overland  runners,  canoe,  and  company 
steamers  bear  the  mail  to  the  forts  of  Hudson  Bay, 
of  the  Saskatchewan,  of  the  Rockies,  and  the  MacKen- 
zie.  In  winter,  scampering  huskies  with  a  running  post 
man  winged  with  snow-shoes  dash  across  the  snowy 
wastes  through  silent  forests  to  the  lonely  forts  of  the 
bay,  or  slide  over  the  prairie  drifts  with  the  music  of 
tinkling  bells  and  soft  crunch-crunch  of  sleigh  runners 
through  the  snow  crust  to  the  leagueless  world  of  the 
Far  North. 

Forty  miles  a  day,  a  couch  of  spruce  boughs  where 
the  racquets  have  dug  a  hole  in  the  snow,  sleighs  placed 
on  edge  as  a  wind  break,  dogs  crouched  on  the  buffalo- 
robes  snarling  over  the  frozen  fish,  deep  hayings  from 
the  running  wolf-pack,  and  before  the  stars  have  faded 
from  the  frosty  sky,  the  mail-carrier  has  risen  and  is 
coasting  away  fast  as  the  huskies  can  gallop. 

Another  picturesque  feature  of  the  fur  trade  was 
the  long  caravan  of  ox-carts  that  used  to  screech  and 
creak  and  jolt  over  the  rutted  prairie  roads  between 

*  It  need  hardly  be  explained  that  it  is  the  prairie  Indian  and 
not  the  forest  Ojibway  who  places  the  body  on  high  scaffolding 
above  the  ground ;  hence  the  woman's  dilemma. 


198  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Winnipeg  and  St.  Paul.  More  than  1,500  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  carts  manned  by  500  traders  with,  tawny 
spouses  and  black-eyed  impish  children,  squatted  on 
top  of  the  load,  left  Canada  for  St.  Paul  in  August  and 
returned  in  October.  The  carts  were  made  without 
a  rivet  of  iron.  Bent  wood  formed  the  tires  of  the  two 
wheels.  Hardwood  axles  told  their  woes  to  the  world 
in  the  scream  of  shrill  bagpipes.  Wooden  racks  took 
the  place  of  cart  box.  In  the  shafts  trod  a  staid  old  ox 
guided  from  the  horns  or  with  a  halter,  drawing  the 
load  with  collar  instead  of  a  yoke.  The  harness  was 
of  skin  thongs.  In  place  of  the  ox  sometimes  was  a 
"  shagganippy "  pony,  raw  and  unkempt,  which  the 
imps  lashed  without  mercy  or  the  slightest  inconve 
nience  to  the  horse. 

A  red  flag  with  the  letters  H.  B.  C.  in  white  dec 
orated  the  leading  cart.  During  the  Sioux  massacres 
the  fur  caravans  were  unmolested,  for  the  Indians  rec 
ognised  the  flags  and  wished  to  remain  on  good  terms 
with  the  fur  traders. 

Ox-carts  still  bring  furs  to  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
posts,  and  screech  over  the  corduroyed  swamps  of  the 
MacKenzie;  but  the  railway  has  replaced  the  caravan 
as  a  carrier  of  freight. 

Hudson's  Bay  Company  steamers  now  ply  on  the 
largest  of  the  inland  rivers  with  long  lines  of  fur-laden 
barges  in  tow;  but  the  canoe  brigades  still  bring  the 
winter's  hunt  to  the  forts  in  spring.  Five  to  eight 
craft  make  a  brigade,  each  manned  by  eight  paddlers 
with  an  experienced  steersman,  who  is  usually  also 
guide.  But  the  one  ranking  first  in  importance  is  the 
bowman,  whose  quick  eye  must  detect  signs  of  nearing 
rapids,  whose  steel-shod  pole  gives  the  cue  to  the  other 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

\t 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    199 

paddlers  and  steers  the  craft  past  foamy  reefs.  The 
bowman  it  is  who  leaps  out  first  when  there  is  "  track 
ing  " — pulling  the  craft  up-stream  by  tow-line — who 
stands  waist  high  in  ice  water  steadying  the  rocking 
bark  lest  a  sudden  swirl  spill  furs  to  the  bottom,  who 
hands  out  the  pacl~~  +o  the  others  when  the  waters  are 
too  turbulent  for  "  tracking "  and  there  must  be  a 
"  portage,"  and  who  leads  the  brigade  on  a  run — 
half  trot,  half  amble — overland  to  the  calmer  currents. 
"  Pipes  "  are  the  measure  of  a  portage — that  is,  the 
pipes  smoked  while  the  voyageurs  are  on  the  run.  The 
bowman  it  is  who  can  thread  a  network  of  water-ways 
by  day  or  dark,  past  rapids  or  whirlpools,  with  the  cer 
tainty  of  an  arrow  to  the  mark.  On  all  long  trips  by 
dog  train  or  canoe,  pemmican  made  of  buffalo  meat  and 
marrow  put  in  air-tight  bags  was  the  standard  food. 
The  pemmican  now  used  is  of  moose  or  caribou  beef. 

The  only  way  to  get  an  accurate  idea  of  the  size  of 
the  kingdom  ruled  by  these  monarchs  of  the  lonely 
wastes  is  by  comparison. 

Take  a  map  of  North  America.  On  the  east  is 
Labrador,  a  peninsula  as  vast  as  Germany  and  Hol 
land  and  Belgium  and  half  of  France.  On  the  coast 
and  across  the  unknown  interior  are  the  magical  letters 
H.  B.  C.,  meaning  Hudson's  Bay  Company  fort  (past 
or  present),  a  little  whitewashed  square  with  eighteen- 
foot  posts  planted  picket-wise  for  a  wall,  match-box 
bastions  loopholed  for  musketry,  a  barracks-like  struc 
ture  across  the  court-yard  with  a  high  lookout  of  some 
sort  near  the  gate.  Here  some  trader  with  wife  and 
children  and  staff  of  Indian  servants  has  held  his  own 
against  savagery  and  desolating  loneliness.  In  one  of 
these  forts  Lord  Strathcona  passed  his  youth. 


200  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Once  more  to  the  map.  With  one  prong  of  a  com 
pass  in  the  centre  of  Hudson  Bay,  describe  a  circle.  The 
northern  half  embraces  the  baffling  arctics;  but  on  the 
line  of  the  southern  circumference  like  beads  on  a 
string  are  Churchill  high  on  the  left,  York  below  in 
black  capitals  as  befits  the  importance  of  the  great  fur 
emporium  of  the  bay,  Severn  and  Albany  and  Moose 
and  Kupert  and  Fort  George  round  the  south,  and  to 
the  right,  larger  and  more  strongly  built  forts  than  in 
Labrador,  with  the  ruins  of  stone  walls  at  Churchill 
that  have  a  depth  of  fifteen  feet.  Six-pounders  once 
mounted  these  bastions.  The  remnants  of  galleries  for 
soldiery  run  round  the  inside  walls.  A  flag  floats  over 
each  fort  with  the  letters  II.  B.  C.*  Officers'  dwellings 
occupy  the  centre  of  the  court-yard.  Banked  against 
the  walls  are  the  men's  quarters,  fur  presses,  stables, 
storerooms.  Always  there  is  a  chapel,  at  one  fort  a 
hospital,  at  others  the  relics  of  stoutly  built  old  powder 
magazines  made  to  withstand  the  siege  of  hand  gre 
nades  tossed  in  by  French  assailants  from  the  bay,  who 
knew  that  the  loot  of  a  fur  post  was  better  harvest  than 
a  treasure  ship.  Elsewhere  two  small  bastions  situ 
ated  diagonally  across  from  each  other  were  sufficient  to 
protect  the  fur  post  by  sending  a  raking  fire  along  the 
walls;  but  here  there  was  danger  of  the  French  fleet, 
and  the  walls  were  built  with  bastion  and  trench  and 
rampart. 

Again  to  the  map.  Between  Hudson  Bay  and  the 
Rocky  Mountains  stretches  an  American  Siberia — the 
Barren  Lands.  Here,  too,  on  every  important  water- 


*  The  flag  was  hoisted  on  Sundays  to  notify  the  Indians  there 
would  be  no  trade. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    201 

way,  Athabasca  and  the  Liard  and  the  MacKenzie  into 
the  land  of  winter  night  and  micKight  sun,  extend  Hud 
son's  Bay  Company  posts.  We  think  of  these  northern 
streams  as  ice-jammed,  sluggish  currents,  with  mean 
log  villages  on  their  banks.  The  fur  posts  of  the  sub- 
arctics  are  not  imposing  with  picket  fences  in  place  of 
stockades,  for  no  French  foe  was  feared  here.  But  the 
MacKenzie  River  is  one  of  the  longest  in  the  world,  with 
two  tributaries  each  more  than  1,000  miles  in  length. 
It  has  a  width  of  a  mile,  and  a  succession  of  rapids  that 
rival  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  palisaded  banks  higher  than 
the  Hudson  River's,  and  half  a  dozen  lakes  into  one  of 
which  you  could  drop  two  New  England  States  without 
raising  a  sand  bar. 

The  map  again.  Between  the  prairie  and  the  Paci 
fic  Ocean  is  a  wilderness  of  peaks,  a  Switzerland 
stretched  into  half  the  length  of  a  continent.  Here, 
too,  like  eagle  nests  in  rocky  fastnesses  are  fur  posts. 

Such  is  the  realm  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
to-day. 

Before  1812  there  was  no  international  boundary 
in  the  fur  trade.  But  after  the  war  Congress  barred 
out  Canadian  companies.  The  next  curtailment  of 
hunting-ground  came  in  1869— '70,  when  the  company 
surrendered  proprietary  rights  to  the  Canadian  Gov 
ernment,  retaining  only  the  right  to  trade  in  the  vast 
north  land.  The  formation  of  new  Canadian  provinces 
took  place  south  of  the  Saskatchewan ;  but  north  the 
company  barters  pelts  undisturbed  as  of  old.  Yearly 
the  staffs  are  shifted  from  post  to  post  as  the  for 
tunes  of  the  hunt  vary;  but  the  principal  posts  not 
including  winter  quarters  for  a  special  hunt  have  prob 
ably  not  exceeded  two  hundred  in  number,  nor  fallen 


202      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

below  one  hundred  for  the  last  century.  Of  these  the 
greater  numbers  are  of  course  in  the  Far  North.  When 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  was  fighting  rivals,  Nor' 
Westers  from  Montreal,  Americans  from  St.  Louis,  it 
must  have  employed  as  traders,  packers,  coureurs,  ca 
noe  men,  hunters,  and  guides,  at  least  5,000  men;  for 
its  rival  employed  that  number,  and  "  The  Old  Lady," 
as  the  enemy  called  it,  always  held  her  own.  Over  this 
wilderness  army  were  from  250  to  300  officers,  each 
with  the  power  of  life  and  death  in  his  hands.  To  the 
honour  of  the  company,  be  it  said,  this  power  was  sel 
dom  abused.*  Occasionally  a  brutal  sea-captain  might 
use  lash  and  triangle  and  branding  along  the  northern 
coast ;  but  officers  defenceless  among  savage  hordes  must 
of  necessity  have  lived  on  terms  of  justice  with  their 
men. 

The  Canadian  Government  now  exercises  judicial 
functions;  but  where  less  than  700  mounted  police  pa 
trol  a  territory  as  large  as  Siberia,  the  company's  fac 
tor  is  still  the  chief  representative  of  the  law's  power. 
Times  without  number  under  the  old  regime  has  a  Hud 
son's  Bay  officer  set  out  alone  and  tracked  an  Indian 
murderer  to  hidden  fastness,  there  to  arrest  him  or 
shoot  him  dead  on  the  spot ;  because  if  murder  went  un 
punished  that  mysterious  impulse  to  kill  which  is  as 
rife  in  the  savage  heart  as  in  the  wolf's  would  work  its 
havoc  unchecked. 

Just  as  surely  as  "the  sun  rises  and  the  rivers 
flow"  the  savage  knows  when  the  hunt  fails  he  will 
receive  help  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  officer.  But  just 

*  Governor  Norton  will,  of  course,  be  recalled  as  the  most 
conspicuous  for  his  brutality. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    203 

as  surely  he  knows  if  he  cornr?  its  any  crime  that  same 
unbending,  fearless  white  man  will  pursue — and  pur 
sue — and  pursue  guilt  to  the  death.  One  case  is  on  rec 
ord  of  a  trader  thrashing  an  Indian  within  an  inch 
of  his  life  for  impudence  to  officers  two  or  three  years 
before.  Of  course,  the  vendetta  may  cut  both  ways, 
the  Indian  treasuring  vengeance  in  his  heart  till  he  can 
wreak  it.  That  is  an  added  reason  why  the  white  man's 
justice  must  be  unimpeachable.  "  Pro  pelle  cutem" 
says  the  motto  of  the  company  arms.  Without  flip 
pancy  it  might  be  said  "  Ay  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth 
for  a  tooth,"  as  well  as  "  A  skin  for  a  skin  " — which  ex 
plains  the  freedom  from  crime  among  northern  Indians. 

And  who  are  the  subjects  living  under  this  Mosaic 
paternalism  ? 

Stunted  Eskimo  of  the  Far  North,  creatures  as  am 
phibious  as  the  seals  whose  coats  they  wear,  with  the 
lustreless  eyes  of  dwarfed  intelligence  and  the  agility 
of  seal  flippers  as  they  whisk  double-bladed  paddles 
from  side  to  side  of  the  darting  kyacks;  wandering 
Montagnais  from  the  domed  hills  of  Labrador,  lonely 
and  sad  and  silent  as  the  naked  desolation  of  their 
rugged  land;  Ojibways  soft -voiced  as  the  forest  glooms 
in  that  vast  land  of  spruce  tangle  north  of  the  Great 
Lakes;  Crees  and  Sioux  from  the  plains,  cunning  with 
the  stealth  of  creatures  that  have  hunted  and  been 
hunted  on  the  shelterless  prairie ;  Blackf eet  and  Crows, 
game  birds  of  the  foothills  that  have  harried  all  other 
tribes  for  tribute,  keen-eyed  as  the  eagles  on  the  moun 
tains  behind  them,  glorying  in  war  as  the  finest  kind 
of  hunting;  mountain  tribes — Stonies,  Kootenais,  Sho*- 
shonies — splendid  types  of  manhood  because  only  the 
fittest  can  survive  the  hardships  of  the  mountains; 


204  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

coast  Indians,  Chinook  and  Chilcoot — low  and  lazy  be 
cause  the  great  rivers  feed  them  with  salmon  and  they 
have  no  need  to  work. 

Over  these  lawless  Arabs  of  the  New  World  wilder 
ness  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  has  ruled  for  two  and 
a  half  centuries  with  smaller  loss  of  life  in  the  aggre 
gate  than  the  railways  of  the  United  States  cause  in  a 
single  year. 

Hunters  have  been  lost  in  the  wilds.  White  trap 
pers  have  been  assassinated  by  Indians.  Forts  have 
been  wiped  out  of  existence.  Ten,  twenty,  thirty  tra 
ders  have  been  massacred  at  different  times.  But,  then, 
the  loss  of  life  on  railways  totals  up  to  thousands  in  a 
single  year. 

When  fighting  rivals  long  ago,  it  is  true  that  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  recognised  neither  human  nor 
divine  law.  Grant  the  charge  and  weigh  it  against  the 
benefits  of  the  company's  rule.  When  Hearne  visited 
Chippewyans  two  centuries  ago  he  found  the  Indians 
in  a  state  uncontaminated  by  the  trader ;  and  that  state 
will  give  the  ordinary  reader  cold  shivers  of  horror  at 
the  details  of  massacre  and  degradation.  Every  visitor 
since  has  reported  the  same  tribe  improved  in  standard 
of  living  under  Hudson's  Bay  rule.  Recently  a  well- 
known  Canadian  governor  making  an  itinerary  of  the 
territory  round  the  bay  found  the  Indians  such  devout 
Christians  that  they  put  his  white  retinue  to  shame. 
Returning  to  civilization,  the  governor  was  observed  at 
tending  the  services  of  his  own  denomination  with  a 
greater  fury  than  was  his  wont.  Asked  the  reason,  he 
confided  to  a  club  friend  that  he  would  be  Hanked  if 
he  could  allow  heathen  Indians  to  be  better  Christians 
than  he  was. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    205 

Some  of  the  shiftless  Indians  may  be  hopelessly  in 
debt  to  the  company  for  advanced  provisions,  but  if  the 
company  had  not  made  these  advances  the  Indians 
would  have  starved,  and  the  debt  is  never  exacted  by 
seizure  of  the  hunt  that  should  go  to  feed  a  family. 

Of  how  many  other  creditors  may  that  be  said  ?  Of 
how  many  companies  that  it  has  cared  for  the  sick, 
sought  the  lost,  fed  the  starving,  housed  the  homeless  ? 
With  all  its  faults,  that  is  the  record  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company. 


CHAPTER   XV 

KOOT   AND   THE   BOB-CAT 

OLD  whaling  ships,  that  tumble  round  the  world 
and  back  again  from  coast  to  coast  over  strange  seas, 
hardly  ever  suffer  any  of  the  terrible  disasters  that  are 
always  overtaking  the  proud  men-of-war  and  swift 
liners  equipped  with  all  that  science  can  do  for  them 
against  misfortune.  Ask  an  old  salt  why  this  is,  and 
he  will  probably  tell  you  that  he  feels  his  way  forward 
or  else  that  he  steers  by  the  same  chart  as  that — jerk 
ing  his  thumb  sideways  from  the  wheel  towards  some 
sea  gull  careening  over  the  billows.  A  something,  that 
is  akin  to  the  instinct  of  wild  creatures  warning  them 
when  to  go  north  for  the  summer,  when  to  go  south 
for  the  winter,  when  to  scud  for  shelter  from  coming 
storm,  guides  the  old  whaler  across  chartless  seas. 

So  it  is  with  the  trapper.  He  may  be  caught  in 
one  of  his  great  steel-traps  and  perish  on  the  prairie. 
He  may  run  short  of  water  and  die  of  thirst  on  the 
desert.  He  may  get  his  pack  horses  tangled  up  in  a 
valley  where  there  is  no  game  and  be  reduced  to  the 
alternative  of  destroying  what  will  carry  him  back  to 
safety  or  starving  with  a  horse  still  under  him,  before 
he  can  get  over  the  mountains  into  another  valley — 
but  the  true  trapper  will  literally  never  lose  himself. 
Lewis  and  Clark  rightly  merit  the  fame  of  having  first 
206 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  207 

explored  the  Missouri-Columbia  route;  but  years  be 
fore  the  Louisiana  purchase,  free  trappers  were  already 
on  the  Columbia.  David  Thompson  of  the  North- West 
Company  was  the  first  Canadian  to  explore  the  lower 
Columbia;  but  before  Thompson  had  crossed  the  Rock 
ies,  French  hunters  were  already  ranging  the  forests 
of  the  Pacific  slope.  How  did  these  coasters  of  the 
wilds  guide  themselves  over  prairies  that  were  a  chart- 
less  sea  and  mountains  that  were  a  wilderness?  How 
does  the  wavey  know  where  to  find  the  rush-grown  in 
land  pools?  Who  tells  the  caribou  mother  to  seek  re 
fuge  on  islands  where  the  water  will  cut  off  the  wolves 
that  would  prey  on  her  young? 

Something,  which  may  be  the  result  of  generations 
of  accumulated  observation,  guides  the  wavey  and  the 
caribou.  Something,  which  may  be  the  result  of  un 
conscious  inference  from  a  life-time  of  observation, 
guides  the  man.  In  the  animal  we  call  it  instinct,  in 
the  man,  reason;  and  in  the  case  of  the  trapper  track 
ing  pathless  wilds,  the  conscious  reason  of  the  man 
seems  almost  merged  in  the  automatic  instinct  of  the 
brute.  It  is  not  sharp-sightedness — though  no  man 
is  sharper  of  sight  than  the  trapper.  It  is  not  acute- 
ness  of  hearing — though  the  trapper  learns  to  listen 
with  the  noiseless  stealth  of  the  pencil-eared  lynx.  It 
is  not  touch — in  the  sense  of  tactile  contact — any  more 
than  it  is  touch  that  tells  a  suddenly  awakened  sleeper 
of  an  unexpected  noiseless  presence  in  a  dark  room. 
It  is  something  deeper  than  the  tabulated  five  senses, 
a  sixth  sense — a  sense  of  feel,  without  contact — a  sense 
on  which  the  whole  sensate  world  writes  its  records  as 
on  a  palimpsest.  This  palimpsest  is  the  trapper's  chart, 
this  sense  of  feel,  his  weapon  against  the  instinct  of  the 


208  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

brute.  What  part  it  plays  in  the  life  of  every  ranger 
of  the  wilds  can  best  be  illustrated  by  telling  how  Koot 
found  his  way  to  the  fur  post  after  the  rabbit-hunt. 

When  the  midwinter  lull  falls  on  the  hunt,  there 
is  little  use  in  the  trapper  going  far  afield.  Moose 
have  "  yarded  up."  Bear  have  "  holed  up "  and  the 
beaver  are  housed  till  dwindling  stores  compel  them 
to  come  out  from  their  snow-hidden  domes.  There  are 
no  longer  any  buffalo  for  the  trapper  to  hunt  during 
the  lull;  but  what  buffalo  formerly  were  to  the  hunter, 
rabbit  are  to-day.  Shields  and  tepee  covers,  mocca 
sins,  caps  and  coats,  thongs  and  meat,  the  buffalo  used 
to  supply.  These  are  now  supplied  by  "  wahboos — 
little  white  chap,"  which  is  the  Indian  name  for  rabbit. 

And  there  is  no  midwinter  lull  for  "  wahboos." 
While  the  "little  white  chap"  runs,  the  long-haired, 
owlish-eyed  lynx  of  the  Northern  forest  runs  too.  So 
do  all  the  lynx's  feline  cousins,  the  big  yellowish  cou 
gar  of  the  mountains  slouching  along  with  his  head 
down  and  his  tail  lashing  and  a  footstep  as  light  and 
sinuous  and  silent  as  the  motion  of  a  snake;  the  short- 
haired  lucif ee  gorging  himself  full  of  "  little  white 
chaps  "  and  stretching  out  to  sleep  on  a  limb  in  a  dap 
ple  of  sunshine  and  shadow  so  much  like  the  lucifee's 
skin  not  even  a  wolf  would  detect  the  sleeper;  the 
bunchy  bob-cat  bounding  and  skimming  over  the  snow 
for  all  the  world  like  a  bouncing  football  done  up  in 
gray  fur — all  members  of  the  cat  tribe  running  wher 
ever  the  "  little  white  chaps  "  run. 

So  when  the  lull  fell  on  the  hunt  and  the  mink 
trapping  was  well  over  and  marten  had  not  yet  begun, 
Koot  gathered  up  his  traps,  and  getting  a  supply  of 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  209 

provisions  at  the  fur  post,  crossed  the  white  wastes  of 
prairie  to  lonely  swamp  ground  where  dwarf  alder  and 
willow  and  cottonwood  and  poplar  and  pine  grew  in  a 
tangle.  A  few  old  logs  dovetailed  into  a  square  made 
the  wall  of  a  cabin.  Over  these  he  stretched  the  can 
vas  of  his  tepee  for  a  roof  at  a  sharp  enough  angle 
to  let  the  heavy  snow-fall  slide  off  from  its  own  weight. 
Moss  chinked  up  the  logs.  Snow  banked  out  the  wind. 
Pine  boughs  made  the  floor,  two  logs  with  pine  boughs, 
a  bed.  An  odd-shaped  stump  served  as  chair  or  table ; 
and  on  the  logs  of  the  inner  walls  hung  wedge-shaped 
slabs  of  cedar  to  stretch  the  skins.  A  caribou  curtain 
or  bear-skin  across  the  entrance  completed  Koot's 
winter  quarters  for  the  rabbit-hunt. 

Koot's  genealogy  was  as  vague  as  that  of  all  old 
trappers  hanging  round  fur  posts.  Part  of  him — that 
part  which  served  best  when  he  was  on  the  hunting- 
field — was  Ojibway.  The  other  part,  which  made  him 
improvise  logs  into  chair  and  table  and  bed,  was  white 
man;  and  that  served  him  best  when  he  came  to  bar 
gain  with  the  chief  factor  over  the  pelts.  At  the  fur 
post  he  attended  the  Catholic  mission.  On  the  hunt 
ing-field,  when  suddenly  menaced  by  some  great  dan 
ger,  he  would  cry  out  in  the  Indian  tongue  words  that 
meant  "  0  Great  Spirit !  "  And  it  is  altogether  prob 
able  that  at  the  mission  and  on  the  hunting-field,  Koot 
was  worshipping  the  same  Being.  When  he  swore — 
strange  commentary  on  civilization — he  always  used 
white  man's  oaths,  French  patois  or  straight  English. 

Though  old  hermits  may  be  found  hunting  alone 
through  the  Rockies,  Idaho,  Washington,  and  Minne 
sota,  trappers  do  not  usually  go  to  the  wilds  alone;  but 
there  was  so  little  danger  in  rabbit-snaring,  that  Koot 
15 


210  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

had  gone  out  accompanied  by  only  the  mongrel  dog 
that  had  drawn  his  provisions  from  the  fort  on  a  sort 
of  toboggan  sleigh. 

The  snow  is  a  white  page  on  which  the  wild  crea 
tures  write  their  daily  record  for  those  who  can  read. 
All  over  the  white  swamp  were  little  deep  tracks;  here, 
holes  as  if  the  runner  had  sunk;  there,  padded  marks 
as  from  the  bound — bound — bound  of  something  soft; 
then,  again,  where  the  thicket  was  like  a  hedge  with 
only  one  breach  through,  the  footprints  had  beaten  a 
little  hard  rut  walled  by  the  soft  snow.  Koot's  dog 
might  have  detected  a  motionless  form  under  the 
thicket  of  spiney  shrubs,  a  form  that  was  gray  almost 
to  whiteness  and  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  from  the 
snowy  underbrush  but  for  the  blink  of  a  prism  light — 
the  rabbit's  eye.  If  the  dog  did  catch  that  one  tell 
tale  glimpse  of  an  eye  which  a  cunning  rabbit  would 
have  shut,  true  to  the  training  of  his  trapper  master 
he  would  give  no  sign  of  the  discovery  except  perhaps 
the  pricking  forward  of  both  ears.  Koot  himself  pre 
served  as  stolid  a  countenance  as  the  rabbit  playing 
dead  or  simulating  a  block  of  wood.  Where  the  foot 
prints  ran  through  the  breached  hedge,  Koot  stooped 
down  and  planted  little  sticks  across  the  runway  till 
there  was  barely  room  for  a  weasel  to  pass.  Across 
the  open  he  suspended  a  looped  string  hung  from  a 
twig  bent  so  that  the  slightest  weight  in  the  loop 
would  send  it  up  with  a  death  jerk  for  anything  caught 
in  the  tightening  twine. 

All  day  long,  Koot  goes  from  hedge  to  hedge,  from 
runway  to  runway,  choosing  always  the  places  where 
natural  barriers  compel  the  rabbit  to  take  this  path 
and  no  other,  travelling  if  he  can  in  a  circle  from  his 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  211 

cabin  so  that  the  last  snare  set  will  bring  him  back 
with  many  a  zigzag  to  the  first  snare  made.  If  rab 
bits  were  plentiful — as  they  always  were  in  the  fur 
country  of  the  North  except  during  one  year  in  seven 
when  an  epidemic  spared  the  land  from  a  rabbit  pest — 
Koot's  circuit  of  snares  would  run  for  miles  through 
the  swamp.  Traps  for  large  game  would  be  set  out  so 
that  the  circuit  would  require  only  a  day;  but  where 
rabbits  are  numerous,  the  foragers  that  prey — wolf 
and  wolverine  and  lynx  and  bob-cat — will  be  numer 
ous,  too;  and  the  trapper  will  not  set  out  more  snares 
than  he  can  visit  twice  a  day.  Noon — the  Indian's 
hour  of  the  short  shadow — is  the  best  time  for  the 
first  visit,  nightfall,  the  time  of  no  shadow  at  all,  for 
the  second.  If  the  trapper  has  no  wooden  door  to  his 
cabin,  and  in  it — instead  of  caching  in  a  tree — keeps 
fish  or  bacon  that  may  attract  marauding  wolverine, 
he  will  very  probably  leave  his  dogs  on  guard  while  he 
makes  the  round  of  the  snares. 

Finding  tracks  about  the  shack  when  he  came  back 
for  his  noonday  meal,  Koot  shouted  sundry  instruc 
tions  into  the  mongrel's  ear,  emphasized  them  with  a 
moccasin  kick,  picked  up  the  sack  in  which  he  carried 
bait,  twine,  and  traps,  and  set  out  in  the  evening  to 
make  the  round  of  his  snares,  unaccompanied  by  the 
dog.  Eabbit  after  rabbit  he  found,  gray  and  white, 
hanging  stiff  and  stark,  dead  from  their  own  weight, 
strangled  in  the  twine  snares.  Snares  were  set  anew, 
the  game  strung  over  his  shoulder,  and  Koot  was 
walking  through  the  gray  gloaming  for  the  cabin  when 
that  strange  sense  of  feel  told  him  that  he  was  being 
followed.  What  was  it?  Could  it  be  the  dog?  He 
whistled — he  called  it  by  name. 


212  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

In  all  the  world,  there  is  nothing  so  ghostly  silent, 
so  deathly  quiet  as  the  swamp  woods,  muffled  in  the 
snow  of  midwinter,  just  at  nightfall.  By  day,  the 
grouse  may  utter  a  lonely  cluck-cluck,  or  the  snow- 
buntings  chirrup  and  twitter  and  flutter  from  drift 
to  hedge-top,  or  the  saucy  jay  shriek  some  scolding 
impudence.  A  squirrel  may  chatter  out  his  noisy  pro 
test  at  some  thief  for  approaching  the  nuts  which  lie 
cached  under  the  rotten  leaves  at  the  foot  of  the  tree, 
or  the  sun-warmth  may  set  the  melting  snow  shower 
ing  from  the  swan's-down  branches  with  a  patter  like 
rain.  But  at  nightfall  the  frost  has  stilled  the  drip 
of  thaw.  Squirrel  and  bird  are  wrapped  in  the  utter 
quiet  of  a  gray  darkness.  And  the  marauders  that 
fill  midnight  with  sharp  bark,  shrill  trembling  scream, 
deep  baying  over  the  snow  are  not  yet  abroad  in  the 
woods.  All  is  shadowless — stillness — a  quiet  that  is 
audible. 

Koot  turned  sharply  and  whistled  and  called  his 
dog.  There  wasn't  a  sound.  Later  when  the  frost 
began  to  tighten,  sap-frozen  twigs  would  snap.  The 
ice  of  the  swamp,  frozen  like  rock,  would  by-and-bye 
crackle  with  the  loud  echo  of  a  pistol-shot — crackle — 
and  strike — and  break  as  if  artillery  were  firing  a  fusil 
lade  and  infantry  shooters  answering  sharp.  By-and- 
bye,  moon  and  stars  and  Northern  Lights  would  set  the 
shadows  dancing;  and  the  wall  of  the  cougar  would  be 
echoed  by  the  lifting  scream  of  its  mate.  But  now, 
was  not  a  sound,  not  a  motion,  not  a  shadow,  only  the 
noiseless  stillness,  the  shadowless  quiet,  and  the 
feel,  the  feel  of  something  back  where  the  darkness  was 
gathering  like  a  curtain  in  the  bush. 

It  might,  of  course,  be  only  a  silly  long-ears  loping 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  213 

under  cover  parallel  to  the  man,  looking  with  rabbit 
curiosity  at  this  strange  newcomer  to  the  swamp  home 
of  the  animal  world.  Root's  sense  of  feel  told  him 
that  it  wasn't  a  rabbit;  but  he  tried  to  persuade  him 
self  that  it  was,  the  way  a  timid  listener  persuades  her 
self  that  creaking  floors  are  burglars.  Thinking  of 
his  many  snares,  Koot  smiled  and  walked  on.  Then  it 
came  again,  that  feel  of  something  coursing  behind 
the  underbrush  in  the  gloom  of  the  gathering  darkness. 
Koot  stopped  short — and  listened — and  listened — 
listened  to  a  snow-muffled  silence,  to  a  desolating  soli 
tude  that  pressed  in  on  the  lonely  hunter  like  the 
waves  of  a  limitless  sea  round  a  drowning  man. 

The  sense  of  feel  that  is  akin  to  brute  instinct  gave 
him  the  impression  of  a  presence.  Reason  that  is 
man's  told  him  what  it  might  be  and  what  to  do.  Was 
he  not  carrying  the  snared  rabbits  over  his  shoulder? 
Some  hungry  flesh-eater,  more  bloodthirsty  than  cour 
ageous,  was  still  hunting  him  for  the  food  on  his  back 
and  only  lacked  the  courage  to  attack.  Koot  drew  a 
steel-trap  from  his  bag.  He  did  not  wish  to  waste  a 
rabbit-skin,  so  he  baited  the  spring  with  a  piece  of  fat 
bacon,  smeared  the  trap,  the  snow,  everything  that  he 
had  touched  with  a  rabbit-skin,  and  walked  home 
through  the  deepening  dark  to  the  little  log  cabin 
where  a  sharp  "  woof-woof  "  of  welcome  awaited  him. 

That  night,  in  addition  to  the  skins  across  the  door 
way,  Koot  jammed  logs  athwart;  "to  keep  the  cold 
out "  he  told  himself.  Then  he  kindled  a  fire  on  the 
rough  stone  hearth  built  at  one  end  of  the  cabin  and 
with  the  little  clay  pipe  beneath  his  teeth  sat  down 
on  the  stump  chair  to  broil  rabbit.  The  waste  of  the 
rabbit  he  had  placed  in  traps  outside  the  lodge.  Once 


214      THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

his  dog  sprang  alert  with  pricked  ears.  Man  and  dog 
heard  the  sniff — sniff — sniff  of  some  creature  attracted 
to  the  cabin  by  the  smell  of  broiling  meat,  and  now 
rummaging  at  its  own  risk  among  the  traps.  And 
once  when  Koot  was  stretched  out  on  a  bear-skin  be 
fore  the  fire  puffing  at  his  pipe-stem,  drying  his  moc 
casins  and  listening  to  the  fusillade  of  frost  rending 
ice  and  earth,  a  long  low  piercing  wail  rose  and  fell 
and  died  away.  Instantly  from  the  forest  of  the 
swamp  came  the  answering  scream — a  lifting  tumbling 
eldritch  shriek. 

"  I  should  have  set  two  traps/'  says  Koot.  "  They 
are  out  in  pairs." 

Black  is  the  flag  of  danger  to  the  rabbit  world. 
The  antlered  shadows  of  the  naked  poplar  or  the  toss 
ing  arms  of  the  restless  pines,  the  rabbit  knows  to  be 
harmless  shadows  unless  their  dapple  of  sun  and  shade 
conceals  a  brindled  cat.  But  a  shadow  that  walks  and 
runs  means  to  the  rabbit  a  foe;  so  the  wary  trapper 
prefers  to  visit  his  snares  at  the  hour  of  the  short 
shadow. 

It  did  not  surprise  the  trapper  after  he  had  heard 
the  lifting  wail  from  the  swamp  woods  the  night  be 
fore  that  the  bacon  in  the  trap  lay  untouched.  The 
still  hunter  that  had  crawled  through  the  underbrush 
lured  by  the  dead  rabbits  over  Koot's  shoulder  wanted 
rabbit,  not  bacon.  But  at  the  nearest  rabbit  snare, 
where  a  poor  dead  prisoner  had  been  torn  from  the 
twine,  were  queer  padded  prints  in  the  snow,  not  of 
the  rabbit's  making.  Koot  stood  looking  at  the  tell 
tale  mark.  The  dog's  ears  were  all  aprick.  So  was 
Koot's  sense  of  feel,  but  he  couldn't  make  this  thing 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  215 

out.  There  was  no  trail  of  approach  or  retreat.  The 
padded  print  of  the  thief  was  in  the  snow  as  if  the  ani 
mal  had  dropped  from  the  sky  and  gone  back  to  the 
sky. 

Koot  measured  off  ten  strides  from  the  rifled  snare 
and  made  a  complete  circuit  round  it.  The  rabbit 
runway  cut  athwart  the  snow  circle,  but  no  mark  like 
that  shuffling  padded  print. 

"  It  isn't  a  wolverine,  and  it  isn't  a  fisher,  and  it 
isn't  a  coyote,"  Koot  told  himself. 

The  dog  emitted  stupid  little  sharp  barks  looking 
everywhere  and  nowhere  as  if  he  felt  what  he  could 
neither  see  nor  hear.  Koot  measured  off  ten  strides 
more  from  this  circuit  and  again  walked  completely 
round  the  snare.  Not  even  the  rabbit  runways  cut 
this  circle.  The  white  man  grows  indignant  when  baf 
fled,  the  Indian  superstitious.  The  part  that  was 
white  man  in  Koot  sent  him  back  to  the  scene  in  quick 
jerky  steps  to  scatter  poisoned  rabbit  meat  over  the 
snow  and  set  a  trap  in  which  he  readily  sacrificed  a 
full-grown  bunny.  The  part  that  was  Indian  set  a 
world  of  old  memories  echoing,  memories  that  were  as 
much  Koot's  nature  as  the  swarth  of  his  skin,,  memo 
ries  that  Koot's  mother  and  his  mother's  ancestors 
held  of  the  fabulous  man-eating  wolf  called  the  loup- 
garou,  and  the  great  white  beaver  father  of  all  beavers 
and  all  Indians  that  glided  through  the  swamp  mists 
at  night  like  a  ghost,  and  the  monster  grisly  that 
stalked  with  uncouth  gambols  through  the  dark  de 
vouring  benighted  hunters. 

This  time  when  the  mongrel  uttered  his  little 
sharp  barkings  that  said  as  plainly  as  a  dog  could 
speak,  "  Something's  somewhere!  Be  careful  there — 


216  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

oh! — I'll  be  on  to  you  in  just  one  minute!"  Koot 
kicked  the  dog  hard  with  plain  anger;  and  his  anger 
was  at  himself  "because  his  eyes  and  his  ears  failed  to 
localize,  to  real-ize,  to  visualize  what  those  little  pricks 
and  shivers  tingling  down  to  his  finger-tips  meant. 
Then  the  civilized  man  came  uppermost  in  Koot  and 
he  marched  off  very  matter  of  fact  to  the  next  snare. 

But  if  Koot's  vision  had  heen  as  acute  as  his  sense 
of  feel  and  he  had  glanced  up  to  the  topmost  spreading 
bough  of  a  pine  just  above  the  snare,  he  might  have 
detected  lying  in  a  dapple  of  sun  and  shade  something 
with  large  owl  eyes,  something  whose  pencilled  ear- 
tufts  caught  the  first  crisp  of  the  man's  moccasins 
over  the  snow-crust.  Then  the  ear-tufts  were  laid 
flat  back  against  a  furry  form  hardly  differing  from 
the  dapple  of  sun  and  shade.  The  big  owl  eyes  closed 
to  a  tiny  blinking  slit  that  let  out  never  a  ray  of  tell 
tale  light.  The  big  round  body  mottled  gray  and 
white  like  the  snowy  tree  widened — stretched — flat 
tened  till  it  was  almost  -a  part  of  the  tossing  pine 
bough.  Only  when  the  man  and  dog  below  the  tree  had 
passed  far  beyond  did  the  pencilled  ears  blink  forward 
and  the  owl  eyes  open  and  the  big  body  bunch  out  like 
a  cat  with  elevated  haunches  ready  to  spring. 

But  by-and-bye  the  man's  snares  began  to  tell  on 
the  rabbits.  They  grew  scarce  and  timid.  And  the 
thing  that  had  rifled  the  rabbit  snares  grew  hunger- 
bold.  One  day  when  Koot  and  the  dog  were  skimming 
across  the  billowy  drifts,  something  black  far  ahead 
bounced  up,  caught  a  bunting  on  the  wing,  and  with 
another  bounce  disappeared  among  the  trees. 

Koot  said  one  word — "  Cat ! " — and  the  dog  was  off 
full  cry. 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT 

Ever  since  he  had  heard  that  wailing  call  from  the 
swamp  woods,  he  had  known  that  there  were  rival  hunt 
ers,  the  keenest  of  all  still  hunters  among  the  rabbits. 
Every  day  he  came  upon  the  trail  of  their  ravages, 
rifled  snares,  dead  squirrels,  torn  feathers,  even  the  re 
mains  of  a  fox  or  a  coon.  And  sometimes  he  could 
tell  from  the  printings  on  the  white  page  that  the  still 
hunter  had  been  hunted  full  cry  by  coyote  or  timber- 
wolf.  Against  these  wolfish  foes  the  cat  had  one  sure 
refuge  always — a  tree.  The  hungry  coyote  might  try 
to  starve  the  bob-cat  into  surrender;  but  just  as  often, 
the  bob-cat  could  starve  the  coyote  into  retreat;  for  if 
a  foolish  rabbit  darted  past,  what  hungry  coyote  could 
help  giving  chase?  The  tree  had  even  defeated  both 
dog  and  man  that  first  week  when  Koot  could  not  find 
the  cat.  But  a  dog  in  full  chase  could  follow  the  trail 
to  a  tree,  and  a  man  could  shoot  into  the  tree. 

As  the  rabbits  decreased,  Koot  set  out  many  traps 
for  the  bob-cats  now  reckless  with  hunger,  steel-traps 
and  deadfalls  and  pits  and  log  pens  with  a  live  grouse 
clucking  inside.  The  midwinter  lull  was  a  busy  sea 
son  for  Koot. 

Towards  March,  the  sun-glare  has  produced  a  crust 
on  the  snow  that  is  almost  like  glass.  For  Koot  on  his 
snow-shoes  this  had  no  danger;  but  for  the  mongrel 
that  was  to  draw  the  pelts  back  to  the  fort,  the  snow 
crust  was  more  troublesome  than  glass.  Where  the 
crust  was  thick,  with  Koot  leading  the  way  snow-shoes 
and  dog  and  toboggan  glided  over  the  drifts  as  if  on 
steel  runners.  But  in  midday  the  crust  was  soft  and 
the  dog  went  floundering  through  as  if  on  thin  ice,  the 
sharp  edge  cutting  his  feet.  Koot  tied  little  buck 
skin  sacks  round  the  dog's  feet  and  made  a  few  more 


218      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

rounds  of  the  swamp;  but  the  crust  was  a  sign  that 
warned  him  it  was  time  to  prepare  for  the  marten- 
hunt.  To  leave  his  furs  at  the  fort,  he  must  cross  the 
prairie  while  it  was  yet  good  travelling  for  the  dog. 
Dismantling  the  little  cabin,  Koot  packed  the  pelts  on 
the  toboggan,  roped  all  tightly  so  there  could  be  no 
spill  from  an  upset,  and  putting  the  mongrel  in  the 
traces,  led  the  way  for  the  fort  one  night  when  the 
snow-crust  was  hard  as  ice. 

The  moon  came  up  over  the  white  fields  in  a  great 
silver  disk.  Between  the  running  man  and  the  silver 
moon  moved  black  skulking  forms — the  foragers  on 
their  night  hunt.  Sometimes  a  fox  loped  over  a  drift, 
or  a  coyote  rose  ghostly  from  the  snow,  or  timber- 
wolves  dashed  from  wooded  ravines  and  stopped  to  look 
till  Koot  fired  a  shot  that  sent  them  galloping. 

In  the  dark  that  precedes  daylight,  Koot  camped 
beside  a  grove  of  poplars — that  is,  he  fed  the  dog  a 
fish,  whittled  chips  to  make  a  fire  and  boil  some  tea 
for  himself,  then  digging  a  hole  in  the  drift  with 
his  snow-shoe,  laid  the  sleigh  to  windward  and  cud 
dled  down  between  bear-skins  with  the  dog  across  his 
feet. 

Daylight  came  in  a  blinding  glare  of  sunshine  and 
white  snow.  The  way  was  untrodden.  Koot  led  at 
an  ambling  run,  followed  by  the  dog  at  a  fast  trot,  so 
that  the  trees  were  presently  left  far  on  the  offing  and 
the  runners  were  out  on  the  bare  white  prairie  with 
never  a  mark,  tree  or  shrub,  to  break  the  dazzling 
reaches  of  sunshine  and  snow  from  horizon  to  horizon. 
A  man  who  is  breaking  the  way  must  keep  his  eyes  on 
the  ground;  and  the  ground  was  so  blindingly  bright 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  219 

that  Koot  began  to  see  purple  and  yellow  and  red 
patches  dancing  wherever  he  looked  on  the  snow.  He 
drew  his  capote  over  his  face  to  shade  his  eyes;  but  the 
pace  and  the  sun  grew  so  hot  that  he  was  soon  running 
again  unprotected  from  the  blistering  light. 

Towards  the  afternoon,  Koot  knew  that  something 
had  gone  wrong.  Some  distance  ahead,  he  saw  a  black 
object  against  the  snow.  On  the  unbroken  white,  it 
looked  almost  as  big  as  a  barrel  and  seemed  at  least  a 
mile  away.  Lowering  his  eyes,  Koot  let  out  a  spurt  of 
speed,  and  the  next  thing  he  knew  he  had  tripped  his 
snow-shoe  and  tumbled.  Scrambling  up,  he  saw  that  a 
stick  had  caught  the  web  of  his  snow-shoe;  but  where 
was  the  barrel  for  which  he  had  been  steering?  There 
wasn't  any  barrel  at  all — the  barrel  was  this  black 
stick  which  hadn't  been  fifty  yards  away.  Koot  rubbed 
his  eyes  and  noticed  that  black  and  red  and  purple 
patches  were  all  over  the  snow.  The  drifts  were  heav 
ing  and  racing  after  each  other  like  waves  on  an  angry 
sea.  He  did  not  go  much  farther  that  day;  for  every 
glint  of  snow  scorched  his  eyes  like  a  hot  iron.  He 
camped  at  the  first  bluff  and  made  a  poultice  of  cold 
tea  leaves  which  he  laid  across  his  blistered  face  for 
the  night. 

Any  one  who  knows  the  tortures  of  snow-blindness 
will  understand  why  Koot  did  not  sleep  that  night. 
It  was  a  long  night  to  the  trapper,  such  a  very  long 
night  that  the  sun  had  been  up  for  two  hours  before 
its  heat  burned  through  the  layers  of  his  capote  into 
his  eyes  and  roused  him  from  sheer  pain.  Then  he 
sprang  up,  put  up  an  ungantled ,  hand  and  knew  from 
the  heat  of  the  sun  that  it  was  broad  day.  But  when 
he  took  the  bandage  off  his  eyes,  all  he  saw  was  a  black 


220  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

curtain  one  moment,  rockets  and  wheels  and  dancing 
patches  of  purple  fire  the  next. 

Koot  was  no  fool  to  become  panicky  and  feeble 
from  sudden  peril.  He  knew  that  he  was  snow-blind 
on  a  pathless  prairie  at  least  two  days  away  from  the 
fort.  To  wait  until  the  snow-blindness  had  healed 
would  risk  the  few  provisions  that  he  had  and  perhaps 
expose  him  to  a  blizzard.  The  one  rule  of  the  trap 
per's  life  is  to  go  ahead,  let  the  going  cost  what  it  may; 
and  drawing  his  capote  over  his  face,  Koot  went  on. 

The  heat  of  the  sun  told  him  the  directions;  and 
when  the  sun  went  down,  the  crooning  west  wind, 
bringing  thaw  and  snow-crust,  was  his  compass.  And 
when  the  wind  fell,  the  tufts  of  shrub-growth  sticking 
through  the  snow  pointed  to  the  warm  south.  Now 
he  tied  himself  to  his  dog;  and  when  he  camped  be 
side  trees  into  which  he  had  gone  full  crash  before  he 
knew  they  were  there,  he  laid  his  gun  beside  the  dog 
and  sleigh.  Going  out  the  full  length  of  his  cord,  he 
whittled  the  chips  for  his  fire  and  found  his  way  back 
by  the  cord. 

On  the  second  day  of  his  blindness,  no  sun  came  up; 
nor  could  he  guide  himself  by  the  feel  of  the  air,  for 
there  was  no  wind.  It  was  one  of  the  dull  dead  gray 
days  that  precedes  storms.  How  would  he  get  his  di 
rections  to  set  out?  Memory  of  last  night's  travel 
might  only  lead  him  on  the  endless  circling  of  the  lost. 
Koot  dug  his  snow-shoe  to  the  base  of  a  tree,  found 
moss,  felt  it  growing  on  only  one  side  of  the  tree,  knew 
that  side  must  be  the  shady  cold  side,  and  so  took  his 
bearings  from  what  he  thought  was  the  north. 

Koot  said  the  only  time  that  he  knew  any  fear  was 
on  the  evening  of  the  last  day.  The  atmosphere  boded 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  221 

storm.  The  fort  lay  in  a  valley.  Somewhere  between 
Koot  and  that  valley  ran  a  trail.  What  if  he  had 
crossed  the  trail?  What  if  the  storm  came  and  wiped 
out  the  trail  before  he  could  reach  the  fort?  All  day, 
whisky-jack  and  snow-bunting  and  fox  scurried  from 
his  presence;  but  this  night  in  the  dusk  when  he  felt 
forward  on  his  hands  and  knees  for  the  expected  trail, 
the  wild  creatures  seemed  to  grow  bolder.  He  im 
agined  that  he  felt  the  coyotes  closer  than  on  the  other 
nights.  And  then  the  fearful  thought  came  that  he 
might  have  passed  the  trail  unheeding.  Should  he 
turn  back? 

Afraid  to  go  forward  or  back,  Koot  sank  on  the 
ground,  unhooded  his  face  and  tried  to  force  his  eyes 
to  see.  The  pain  brought  biting  salty  tears.  It  was 
quite  useless.  Either  the  night  was  very  dark,  or  the 
eyes  were  very  blind. 

And  then  white  man  or  Indian — who  shall  say 
which  came  uppermost? — Koot  cried  out  to  the  Great 
Spirit.  In  mockery  back  came  the  saucy  scold  of  a 

jay- 

But  that  was  enough  for  Koot — it  was  prompt 
answer  to  his  prayer;  for  where  do  the  jays  quarrel  and 
fight  and  flutter  but  on  the  trail?  Eunning  eagerly 
forward,  the  trapper  felt  the  ground.  The  rutted 
marks  of  a  "  jumper  "  sleigh  cut  the  hard  crust.  With 
a  shout,  Koot  headed  down  the  sloping  path  to  the 
valley  where  lay  the  fur  post,  the  low  hanging  smoke 
of  whose  chimneys  his  eager  nostrils  had  already 
sniffed. 


CHAPTEE   XVI 

OTHEK  LITTLE  ANIMALS  BESIDES  WAHBOOS  THE  KAB- 
BIT — BEING  AN  ACCOUNT  OF  MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK- 
KAT,  SIKAK  THE  SKUNK,  WENUSK  THE  BADGER, 
AND  OTHERS 

I 

Musquash  the  Musk-rat 

EVERY  chapter  in  the  trapper's  life  is  not  a 
"  stunt." 

There  are  the  uneventful  days  when  the  trapper 
seems  to  do  nothing  but  wander  aimlessly  through  the 
woods  over  the  prairie  along  the  margin  of  rush-grown 
marshy  ravines  where  the  stagnant  waters  lap  lazily 
among  the  flags,  though  a  feathering  of  ice  begins  to 
rim  the  quiet  pools  early  in  autumn.  Unless  he  is 
duck-shooting  down  there  in  the  hidden  slough  where 
is  a  great  "  quack-quack  "  of  young  teals,  the  trapper 
may  not  uncase  his  gun.  For  a  whole  morning  he  lies 
idly  in  the  sunlight  beside  some  river  where  a  round 
ish  black  head  occasionally  bobs  up  only  to  dive  under 
when  it  sees  the  man.  Or  else  he  sits  by  the  hour  still 
as  a  statue  on  the  mossy  log  of  a  swamp  where  a  long 
wriggling — wriggling  trail  marks  the  snaky  motion  of 
some  creature  below  the  amber  depths. 

To  the  city  man  whose  days  are  regulated  by  clock 
work  and  electric  trams  with  the  ceaseless  iteration  of 
222 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  223 

gongs  and  "step  fast  there!"  such  a  life  seems  the 
type  of  utter  laziness.  But  the  best-learned  lessons  are 
those  imbibed  unconsciously  and  the  keenest  pleasures 
come  unsought.  Perhaps  when  the  great  profit-and- 
loss  account  of  the  hereafter  is  cast  up,  the  trapper 
may  be  found  to  have  a  greater  sum  total  of  happi 
ness,  of  usefulness,  of  real  knowledge  than  the  multi 
millionaire  whose  life  was  one  buzzing  round  of  drive 
and  worry  and  grind.  Usually  the  busy  city  man  has 
spent  nine  or  ten  of  the  most  precious  years  of  his 
youth  in  study  and  travel  to  learn  other  men's  thoughts 
for  his  own  life's  work.  The  trapper  spends  an  idle 
month  or  two  of  each  year  wandering  through  a  wild 
world  learning  the  technic  of  his  craft  at  first  hand. 
And  the  trapper's  learning  is  all  done  leisurely,  calmly, 
without  bluster  or  drive,  just  as  nature  herself  car 
ries  on  the  work  of  her  realm. 

On  one  of  these  idle  days  when  the  trapper  seems 
to  be  slouching  so  lazily  over  the  prarie  comes  a  whiff 
of  dank  growth  on  the  crisp  autumn  air.  Like  all 
wild  creatures  travelling  up-wind,  the  trapper  at  once 
heads  a  windward  course.  It  comes  again,  just  a  whin* 
as  if  the  light  green  musk-plant  were  growing  some 
where  on  a  dank  bank.  But  ravines  are  not  dank  in 
the  clear  fall  days;  and  by  October  the  musk-plant  has 
wilted  dry.  This  is  a  fresh  living  odour  with  all  the 
difference  between  it  and  dead  leaves  that  there  is  be 
tween  June  roses  and  the  dried  dust  of  a  rose  jar.  The 
wind  falls.  He  may  not  catch  the  faintest  odour  of 
swamp  growth  again,  but  he  knows  there  must  be  stag 
nant  water  somewhere  in  these  prairie  ravines;  and  a 
sense  that  is  part  feel,  part  intuition,  part  inference 
from  what  the  wind  told  of  the  marsh  smell,  leads  his 


224  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

footsteps  down  the  browned  hillside  to  the  soggy  bot 
tom  of  a  slough. 

A  covey  of  teals — very  young,  or  they  would  not  be 
so  bold — flackers  up,  wings  about  with  a  clatter,  then 
settles  again  a  space  farther  ahead  when  the  ducks  see 
that  the  intruder  remains  so  still.  The  man  parts  the 
flags,  sits  down  on  a  log  motionless  as  the  log  itself — 
and  watches!  Something  else  had  taken  alarm  from 
the  crunch  of  the  hunter's  moccasins  through  the  dry 
reeds;  for  a  wriggling  trail  is  there,  showing  where  a 
creature  has  dived  below  and  is  running  among  the  wet 
under-tangle.  Not  far  off  on  another  log  deep  in  the 
shade  of  the  highest  flags  solemnly  perches  a  small 
prairie-owl.  It  is  almost  the  russet  shade  of  the  dead 
log.  It  hunches  up  and  blinks  stupidly  at  all  this 
noise  in  the  swamp. 

"  Oho,"  thinks  the  trapper,  "  so  I've  disturbed  a 
still  hunt,"  and  he  sits  if  anything  stiller  than  ever, 
only  stooping  to  lay  his  gun  down  and  pick  up  a  stone. 

At  first  there  is  nothing  but  the  quacking  of  the 
ducks  at  the  far  end  of  the  swamp.  A  lapping  of  the 
water  against  the  brittle  flags  and  a  water-snake  has 
splashed  away  to  some  dark  haunt.  The  whisky-jack 
calls  out  officious  note  from  a  topmost  bough,  as  much 
as  to  say:  "It's  all  right!  Me — me! — I'm  always 
there! — I've  investigated! — it's  all  right! — he's  quite 
harmless!"  And  away  goes  the  jay  on  business  of 
state  among  the  gopher  mounds. 

Then  the  interrupted  activity  of  the  swamp  is  re 
sumed,  scolding  mother  ducks  reading  the  riot  act  to 
young  teals,  old  geese  coming  craning  and  craning 
their  long  necks  to  drink  at  the  water's  edge,  lizards 
and  water-snakes  splashing  down  the  banks,  midgets 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  225 

and  gnats  sunning  themselves  in  clouds  during  the 
warmth  of  the  short  autumn  days,  with  a  feel  in  the 
air  as  of  crisp  ripeness,  drying  fruit,  the  harvest-home 
of  the  year.  In  all  the  prairie  region  north  and  west  of 
Minnesota — the  Indian  land  of  "  sky-coloured  water  " 
— the  sloughs  lie  on  the  prairie  under  a  crystal  sky  that 
turns  pools  to  silver.  On  this  almost  motionless  sur 
face  are  mirrored  as  if  by  an  etcher's  needle  the  sky 
above,  feathered  wind  clouds,  flag  stems,  surrounding 
cliffs,  even  the  flight  of  birds  on  wing.  As  the  moun 
tains  stand  for  majesty,  the  prairies  for  infinity,  so  the 
marsh  lands  are  types  of  repose. 

But  it  is  not  a  lifeless  repose.  Barely  has  the  trap 
per  settled  himself  when  a  little  sharp  black  nose 
pokes  up  through  the  water  at  the  fore  end  of  the 
wriggling  trail.  A  round  rat-shaped  head  follows  this 
twitching  proboscis.  Then  a  brownish  earth-coloured 
body  swims  with  a  wriggling  sidelong  movement  for 
the  log,  where  roosts  the  blinking  owlet.  A  little 
noiseless  leap!  and  a  dripping  musk-rat  with  long 
flat  tail  and  webbed  feet  scrabbles  up  the  moss-cov 
ered  tree  towards  the  stupid  bird.  Another  moment, 
and  the  owl  would  have  toppled  into  the  water  with  a 
pair  of  sharp  teeth  clutched  to  its  throat.  Then  the 
man  shies  a  well-aimed  stone! 

Splash!  Flop!  The  owl  is  flapping  blindly 
through  the  flags  to  another  hiding-place,  while  the 
wriggle-wriggle  of  the  waters  tells  where  the  marsh- 
rat  has  darted  away  under  the  tangled  growth.  From 
other  idle  days  like  these,  the  trapper  has  learned  that 
musk-rats  are  not  solitary  but  always  to  be  found  in 
colonies.  Now  if  the  musk-rat  were  as  wise  as  the 
beaver  to  whom  the  Indians  say  he  is  closely  akin,  that 
16 


226  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

alarmed  marauder  would  carry  the  news  of  the  man- 
intruder  to  the  whole  swamp.  Perhaps  if  the  others 
remembered  from  the  prod  of  a  spear  or  the  flash  of  a 
gun  what  man's  coming  meant,  that  news  would  cause 
terrified  flight  of  every  musk-rat  from  the  marsh.  But 
musquash — little  heaver,  as  the  Indians  call  him— is 
not  so  wise,  not  so  timid,  not  so  easily  frightened  from, 
his  home  as  amislc*  the  beaver.  In  fact,  nature's  pro 
vision  for  the  musk-rat's  protection  seems  to  have  em 
boldened  the  little  rodent  almost  to  the  point  of 
stupidity.  His  skin  is  of  that  burnt  umber  shade 
hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  the  earth.  At  one 
moment  his  sharp  nose  cuts  the  water,  at  the  next  he 
is  completely  hidden  in  the  soft  clay  of  the  under- 
tangle;  and  while  you  are  straining  for  a  sight  of  him 
through  the  pool,  he  has  scurried  across  a  mud  bank 
to  his  burrow. 

Hunt  him  as  they  may,  men  and  boys  and  ragged 
squaws  wading  through  swamps  knee-high,  yet  after  a 
century  of  hunting  from  the  Chesapeake  and  the 
Hackensack  to  the  swamps  of  "  sky-coloured  water  "  on 
the  far  prairie,  little  musquash  still  yields  6,000,000 
pelts  a  year  with  never  a  sign  of  diminishing.  A.  hun 
dred  years  ago,  in  1788,  so  little  was  musk-rat  held  in 
esteem  as  a  fur,  the  great  North-West  Company  of 


*  Amisk,  the  Chippewyan,  umisk,  the  Cree,  with  much  the 
same  sound.  A  well-known  trader  told  the  writer  that  he  con 
sidered  the  variation  in  Indian  language  more  a  matter  of  dialect 
than  difference  in  meaning,  and  that  while  he  could  speak  only 
Ojibway  he  never  had  any  difficulty  in  understanding  and  being 
understood  by  Cree,  Chippewyan,  and  Assiniboine.  For  instance, 
rabbit,  "the  little  white  chap,"  is  wahboos  on  the  Upper  Ottawa, 
wapus  on  the  Saskatchewan,  wapauce  on  the  MacKenzie. 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK  RAT  227 

Canada  sent  out  only  17,000  or  20,000  skins  a  year. 
So  rapidly  did  musk-rat  grow  in  favour  as  a  lining  and 
imitation  fur  that  in  1888  it  was  no  unusual  thing  for 
200,000  musk-rat-skins  to  be  brought  to  a  single  Hud 
son's  Bay  Company  fort.  In  Canada  the  climate  com 
pels  the  use  of  heavier  furs  than  in  the  United  States, 
so  that  the  all-fur  coat  is  in  greater  demand  than  the 
fur-lined;  but  in  Canada,  not  less  than  2,000,000  musk- 
rat  furs  are  taken  every  year.  In  the  United  States 
the  total  is  close  on  4,000,000.  In  one  city  alone,  St. 
Paul,  50,000  musk-rat-skins  are  cured  every  year.  A 
single  stretch  of  good  marsh  ground  has  yielded  that 
number  of  skins  year  after  year  without  a  sign  of  the 
hunt  telling  on  the  prolific  little  musquash.  Multiply 
50,000  by  prices  varying  from  7  cents  to  75  cents  and 
the  value  of  the  musk-rat-hunt  becomes  apparent. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  musk-rat's  survival  while 
the  strong  creatures  of  the  chase  like  buffalo  and  tim 
ber-wolf  have  been  almost  exterminated?  In  the  first 
place,  settlers  can't  farm  swamps;  so  the  musk-rat 
thrives  just  as  well  in  the  swamps  of  New  Jersey  to 
day  as  when  the  first  white  hunter  set  foot  in  America. 
Then  musquash  lives  as  heartily  on  owls  and  frogs  and 
snakes  as  on  water  mussels  and  lily-pads.  If  one  sort 
of  food  fails,  the  musk-rat  has  as  omnivorous  powers  of 
digestion  as  the  bear  and  changes  his  diet.  Then  he 
can  hide  as  well  in  water  as  on  land.  And  most  im 
portant  of  all,  musk-rat's  family  is  as  numerous  as  a 
cat's,  five  to  nine  rats  in  a  litter,  and  two  or  three  lit 
ters  a  year.  These  are  the  points  that  make  for  little 
musquash's  continuance  in  spite  of  all  that  shot  and 
trap  can  do. 

Having  discovered  what  the  dank  whiff,  half  ani- 


228  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

mal,  half  vegetable,,  signified,,  the  trapper  sets  about 
finding  the  colony.  He  knows  there  is  no  risk  of  the 
little  still-hunter  carrying  alarm  to  the  other  musk-rats. 
If  he  waits,  it  is  altogether  probable  that  the  fleeing 
musk-rat  will  come  up  and  swim  straight  for  the  colony. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  musk-rat  may  have  scurried 
overland  through  the  rushes.  Besides,  the  trapper  ob 
served  tracks,  tiny  leaf-like  tracks  as  of  little  webbed 
feet,  over  the  soft  clay  of  the  marsh  bank.  These  will 
lead  to  the  colony,  so  the  trapper  rises  and  parting  the 
rushes  not  too  noisily,  follows  the  little  footprint  along 
the  margin  of  the  swamp. 

Here  the  track  is  lost  at  the  narrow  ford  of  an  in 
flowing  stream,  but  across  the  creek  lies  a  fallen  poplar 
littered  with — what?  The  feathers  and  bones  of  a 
dead  owlet.  Balancing  himself — how  much  better  the 
moccasins  cling  than  boots! — the  trapper  crosses  the 
log  and  takes  up  the  trail  through  the  rushes.  But 
here  musquash  has  dived  off  into  the  water  for  the  ex 
press  purpose  of  throwing  a  possible  pursuer  off  the 
scent.  But  the  tracks  betrayed  which  way  musquash 
was  travelling;  so  the  trapper  goes  on,  knowing  if  he 
does  not  find  the  little  haycock  houses  on  this  side, 
he  can  cross  to  the  other. 

Presently,  he  almost  stumbles  over  what  sent  the 
musk-rat  diving  just  at  this  place.  It  is  the  wreck  of 
a  wolverine's  ravage — a  little  wattled  dome-shaped 
house  exposed  to  that  arch-destroyer  by  the  shrinking 
of  the  swamp.  So  shallow  has  the  water  become,  that 
a  wolverine  has  easily  waded  and  leaped  clear  across 
to  the  roof  of  the  musk-rat's  house.  A  beaver-dam 
two  feet  thick  cannot  resist  the  onslaught  of  the  wol 
verine's  claws;  how  much  less  will  this  round  nest  of 


8  I 

c    ;r 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  229 

reeds  and  grass  and  mosses  cemented  together  with 
soft  clay?  The  roof  has  been  torn  from  the  domed 
house,  leaving  the  inside  bare  and  showing  plainly  the 
domestic  economy  of  the  musk-rat  home,  smooth  round 
walls  inside,  a  floor  or  gallery  of  sticks  and  grasses, 
where  the  family  had  lived  in  an  air  chamber  above 
the  water,  rough  walls  below  the  water-line  and  two 
or  three  little  openings  that  must  have  been  safely  un 
der  water  before  the  swamp  receded.  Perhaps  a  mus 
sel  or  lily  bulb  has  been  left  in  the  deserted  larder. 
From  the  oozy  slime  below  the  mid-floor  to  the  top 
most  wall  will  not  measure  more  than  two  or  three 
feet.  If  the  swamp  had  not  dried  here,  the  stupid  lit 
tle  musk-rats  that  escaped  the  ravager's  claws  would 
probably  have  come  back  to  the  wrecked  house,  built 
up  the  torn  roof,  and  gone  on  living  in  danger  till 
another  wolverine  came.  But  a  water  doorway  the 
musk-rat  must  have.  That  he  has  learned  by  countless 
assaults  on  his  house-top,  so  when  the  marsh  retreated 
the  musk-rats  abandoned  their  house. 

All  about  the  deserted  house  are  runways,  tiny 
channels  across  oozy  peninsulas  and  islands  of  the 
musk-rat's  diminutive  world  such  as  a  very  small  beaver 
might  make.  The  trapper  jumps  across  to  a  dry 
patch  or  mound  in  the  midst  of  the  slimy  bottom  and 
prods  an  earth  bank  with  a  stick.  It  is  as  he  thought 
— hollow ;  a  musk-rat  burrow  or  gallery  in  the  clay  wall 
where  the  refugees  from  this  house  had  scuttled  from 
the  wolverine.  But  now  all  is  deserted.  The  water 
has  shrunk — that  was  the  danger  signal  to  the  musk- 
rat;  and  there  had  been  a  grand  moving  to  a  deeper 
part  of  the  swamp.  Perhaps,  after  all,  this  is  a  very 
old  house  not  used  since  last  winter. 


230      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Going  back  to  the  bank,  the  trapper  skirts  through 
the  crush  of  brittle  rushes  round  the  swamp.  Coming 
sharply  on  deeper  water,  a  dank,  stagnant  bayou, 
heavy  with  the  smell  of  furry  life,  the  trapper  pushes 
aside  the  flags,  peers  out  and  sees  what  resembles  a 
prairie-dog  town  on  water — such  a  number  of  wattled 
houses  that  they  had  shut  in  the  water  as  with  a  dam. 
Too  many  flags  and  willows  lie  over  the  colony  for  a 
glimpse  of  the  tell-tale  wriggling  trail  across  the 
water;  but  from  the  wet  tangle  of  grass  and  moss  comes 
an  oozy  pattering. 

If  it  were  winter,  the  trapper  could  proceed  as  he 
would  against  a  beaver  colony,  staking  up  the  outlet 
from  the  swamp,  trenching  the  ice  round  the  different 
houses,  breaking  open  the  roofs  and  penning  up  any 
fugitives  in  their  own  bank  burrows  till  he  and  his  dog 
and  a  spear  could  clear  out  the  gallery.  But  in  win 
ter  there  is  more  important  work  than  hunting  musk- 
rat.  Musk-rat-trapping  is  for  odd  days  before  the  regu 
lar  hunt. 

Opening  the  sack  which  he  usually  carries  on  his 
back,  the  trapper  draws  out  three  dozen  small  traps 
no  larger  than  a  rat  or  mouse  trap.  Some  of  these 
he  places  across  the  runways  without  any  bait;  for  the 
musk-rat  must  pass  this  way.  Some  he  smears  with 
strong-smelling  pomatum.  Some  he  baits  with  carrot 
or  apple.  Others  he  does  not  bait  at  all,  simply  laying 
them  on  old  logs  where  he  knows  the  owlets  roost  by 
day.  But  each  of  the  traps — bait  or  no  bait — he  at 
taches  to  a  stake  driven  into  the  water  so  that  the 
prisoner  will  be  held  under  when  he  plunges  to  es 
cape  till  h\  is  drowned.  Otherwise,  he  would  gnaw 
his  foot  free  of  the  trap  and  disappear  in  a  burrow. 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  231 

If  the  marsh  is  large,  there  will  be  more  than  one 
musk-rat  colony.  Having  exhausted  his  traps  on  the 
first,  the  trapper  lies  in  wait  at  the  second.  When  the 
moon  comes  up  over  the  water,  there  is  a  great  splash 
ing  about  the  musk-rat  nests;  for  autumn  is  the  time 
for  house-building  and  the  musk-rats  work  at  night.  If 
the  trapper  is  an  Eastern  man,  he  will  wade  in  as  they 
do  in  New  Jersey;  but  if  he  is  a  type  of  the  Western 
hunter.,  he  lies  on  the  log  among  the  rushes,  popping  a 
shot  at  every  head  that  appears  in  the  moonlit  water. 
His  dog  swims  and  dives  for  the  quarry.  By  the  time 
the  stupid  little  musk-rats  have  taken  alarm  and  hid 
den,  the  man  has  twenty  or  thirty  on  the  bank.  Go 
ing  home,  he  empties  and  resets  the  traps. 

Thirty  marten  traps  that  yield  six  martens  do  well. 
Thirty  musk-rat  traps  are  expected  to  give  thirty  musk- 
rats.  Add  to  that  the  twenty  shot,  and  what  does  the 
day's  work  represent?  Here  are  thirty  skins  of  a 
coarse  light  reddish  hair,  such  as  lines  the  poor  man's 
overcoat.  These  will  sell  for  from  7  to  15  cents  each. 
They  may  go  roughly  for  $3  at  the  fur  post.  Here  are 
ton  of  the  deeper  brown  shades,  with  long  soft  fur  that 
lines  a  lady's  cloak.  They  are  fine  enough  to  pass  for 
mink  with  a  little  dyeing,  or  imitation  seal  if  they  are 
properly  plucked.  These  will  bring  25  or  30  cents — 
say  $2.50  in  all.  But  here  are  ten  skins,  deep,  silky, 
almost  black,  for  which  a  Russian  officer  will  pay  high 
prices,  skins  that  will  go  to  England,  and  from  Eng 
land  to  Paris,  and  from  Paris  to  St.  Petersburg  with 
accelerating  cost  mark  till  the  Russian  grandee  is  pay 
ing  $1  or  more  for  each  pelt.  The  trapper  will  ask 
30,  40,  50  cents  for  these,  making  perhaps  $3.50  in  all. 
Then  this  idle  fellow's  day  has  totaled  up  to  $9;  not  a 


232  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

bad  day's  work,  considering  he  did  not  go  to  the  uni 
versity  for  ten  years  to  learn  his  craft,  did  not  know 
what  wear  and  tear  and  drive  meant  as  he  worked,  did 
not  spend  more  than  a  few  cents'  worth  of  shot.  But 
for  his  musk-rat-pelts  the  man  will  not  get  $9  in  coin 
unless  he  lives  very  near  the  great  fur  markets.  He 
will  get  powder  and  clothing  and  food  and  tobacco 
whose  first  cost  has  been  increased  a  hundredfold  by 
ship  rates  and  railroad  rates,  by  keel-boat  freight  and 
pack-horse  expenses  and  portage  charges  past  count 
less  rapids.  But  he  will  get  all  that  he  needs,  all  that 
he  wants,  all  that  his  labour  is  worth,  this  "  lazy  vaga 
bond  "  who  spends  half  his  time  idling  in  the  sun.  Of 
how  many  other  men  can  that  be  said? 

But  what  of  the  ruthless  slaughter  among  the  little 
musk-rats?  Does  humanity  not  revolt  at  the  thought? 
Is  this  trapping  not  after  all  brutal  butchery? 

Animal  kindliness — if  such  a  thing  exists  among 
musk-rats — could  hardly  protest  against  the  slaughter, 
seeing  the  musk-rats  themselves  wage  as  ruthless  a  war 
against  water-worm  and  owlet  as  man  wages  against 
musk-rats.  It  is  the  old  question,  should  animal  life 
be  sacrificed  to  preserve  human  life?  To  that  ques 
tion  there  is  only  one  answer.  Linings  for  coats  are 
more  important  life-savers  than  all  the  humane  socie 
ties  of  the  world  put  together.  It  is  probable  that  the 
first  thing  the  prehistoric  man  did  to  preserve  his  own 
life  when  he  realized  himself  was  to  slay  some  destruc 
tive  animal  and  appropriate  its  coat. 


SIKAK  THE  SKUNK  233 

II 

Sikak  the  Skunk 

Sikak  the  skunk  it  is  who  supplies  the  best  imita 
tions  of  sable.  But  cleanse  the  fur  never  so  well,  on  a 
damp  day  it  still  emits  the  heavy  sickening  odour  that 
betrays  its  real  nature.  That  odour  is  sikak's  invinci 
ble  defence  against  the  white  trapper.  The  hunter 
may  follow  the  little  four-abreast  galloping  footprints 
that  lead  to  a  hole  among  stones  or  to  rotten  logs,  but 
long  before  he  has  reached  the  nesting-place  of  his 
quarry  comes  a  stench  against  which  white  blood  is 
powerless.  Or  the  trapper  may  find  an  unexpected 
visitor  in  one  of  the  pens  which  he  has  dug  for  other 
animals — a  little  black  creature  the  shape  of  a  squirrel 
and  the  size  of  a  cat  with  white  stripings  down  his 
back  and  a  bushy  tail.  It  is  then  a  case  of  a  quick 
deadly  shot,  or  the  man  will  be  put  to  rout  by  an  odour 
that  will  pollute  the  air  for  miles  around  and  drive 
him  off  that  section  of  the  hunting-field.  The  cuttle 
fish  is  the  only  other  creature  that  possesses  as  power 
ful  means  of  defence  of  a  similar  nature,  one  drop 
of  the  inky  fluid  which  it  throws  out  to  hide  it  from 
pursuers  burning  the  fisherman's  eyes  like  scalding 
acid.  As  far  as  white  trappers  are  concerned,  sikak 
is  only  taken  by  the  chance  shots  of  idle  days.  Yet 
the  Indian  hunts  the  skunk  apparently  utterly  oblivi 
ous  of  the  smell.  Traps,  poison,  deadfalls,  pens  are 
the  Indian  weapons  against  the  skunk;  and  a  Cree  will 
deliberately  skin  and  stretch  a  pelt  in  an  atmosphere 
that  is  blue  with  what  is  poison  to  the  white  man. 

The  only  case  I  ever  knew  of  white  trappers  hunt 
ing  the  skunk  was  of  three  men  on  the  North  Sas- 


234:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

katchewan.  One  was  an  Englishman  who  had  been 
long  in  the  service  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and 
knew  all  the  animals  of  the  north.  The  second  was 
the  guide,  a  French-Canadian,  and  the  third  a  Sandy, 
fresh  "  frae  oot  the  land  o'  heather/'  The  men  were 
wakened  one  night  by  the  noise  of  some  animal  scram 
bling  through  the  window  into  their  cabin  and  rum 
maging  in  the  dark  among  the  provisions.  The 
Frenchman  sprang  for  a  light  and  Sandy  got  hold  of 
his  gun. 

"  Losh,  mon,  it's  a  wee  bit  beastie  a'  strip't  black 
and  white  wi'  a  tail  like  a  so'dier's  cocade! " 

That  information  brought  the  Englishman  to  his 
feet  howling,  "  Don't  shoot  it!  Don't  shoot  it!  Leave 
that  thing  alone,  I  tell  you! " 

But  Sandy  being  a  true  son  of  Scotia  with  a  Pres 
byterian  love  of  argument  wished  to  debate  the  ques 
tion. 

"  An'  what  for  wu'd  a  leave  it  eating  a'  the  oat 
meal?  Ill  no  leave  it  rampagin'  th'  eatables — I  wull 
be  pokin'  it  oot! — shoo! — shoo!" 

At  that  the  Frenchman  flung  down  the  light  and 
bolted  for  the  door,  followed  by  the  English  trader 
cursing  between  set  teeth  that  before  "  that  blunder 
ing  blockhead  had  argued  the  matter"  something 
would  happen. 

Something  did  happen. 

Sandy  came  through  the  door  with  such  precipitate 
haste  that  the  topmost  beam  brought  his  head  a  mighty 
thwack,  roaring  out  at  the  top  of  his  voice  that  the 
deil  was  after  him  for  a'  the  sins  that  iver  he  had 
committed  since  he  was  born. 


WENUSK  THE  BADGER  235 

III 
Wenusk  the  Badger 

Badger,  too,  is  one  of  the  furs  taken  by  the  trap 
per  on  idle  days.  East  of  St.  Paul  and  Winnipeg,  the 
fur  is  comparatively  unknown,  or  if  known,  so  badly 
prepared  that  it  is  scarcely  recognisable  for  badger. 
This  is  probably  owing  to  differences  in  climate.  Badger 
in  its  perfect  state  is  a  long  soft  fur,  resembling  wood 
marten,  with  deep  overhairs  almost  the  length  of 
one's  hand  and  as  dark  as  marten,  with  underhairs  as 
thick  and  soft  and  yielding  as  swan's-down,  shading 
in  colour  from  fawn  to  grayish  white.  East  of  the 
Mississippi,  there  is  too  much  damp  in  the  atmosphere 
for  such  a  long  soft  fur.  Consequently  specimens  of 
badger  seen  in  the  East  must  either  be  sheared  of  the 
long  overhairs  or  left  to  mat  and  tangle  on  the  first 
rainy  day.  In  New  York,  Quebec,  Montreal,  and 
Toronto — places  where  the  finest  furs  should  be  on 
sale  if  anywhere — I  have  again  and  again  asked  for 
badger,  only  to  be  shown  a  dull  matted  short  fawnish 
fur  not  much  superior  to  cheap  dyed  furs.  It  is  not 
surprising  there  is  no  demand  for  such  a  fur  and  East 
ern  dealers  have  stopped  ordering  it.  In  the  North- 
West  the  most  common  mist  during  the  winter  is  a 
frost  mist  that  is  more  a  snow  than  a  rain,  so  there  is 
little  injury  to  furs  from  moisture.  Here  the  badger  is 
prime,  long,  thick,  and  silky,  almost  as  attractive  as 
ermine  if  only  it  were  enhanced  by  as  high  a  price. 
Whether  badger  will  ever  grow  in  favour  like  musk-rat 
or  'coon,  and  play  an  important  part  in  the  returns  of 
the  fur  exporters,  is  doubtful.  The  world  takes  its 
fashions  from  European  capitals;  and  European  capi- 


236  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

tals  are  too  damp  for  badger  to  be  in  fashion  with 
them.  Certainly,  with  the  private  dealers  of  the 
North  and  West,  badger  is  yearly  becoming  more 
important. 

Like  the  musk-rat,  badger  is  prime  in  the  au 
tumn.  Wherever  the  hunting-grounds  of  the  ani 
mals  are,  there  will  the  hunting-grounds  of  the  trap 
per  be.  Badgers  run  most  where  gophers  sit  sun 
ning  themselves  on  the  clay  mounds,  ready  to  bolt 
down  to  their  subterranean  burrows  on  the  first  ap 
proach  of  an  enemy.  Eternal  enemies  these  two  are, 
gopher  and  badger,  though  they  both  live  in  ground 
holes,  nest  their  lairs  with  grasses,  run  all  summer  and 
sleep  all  winter,  and  alike  prey  on  the  creatures  smaller 
than  themselves — mice,  moles,  and  birds.  The  gopher, 
or  ground  squirrel,  is  smaller  than  the  wood  squirrel, 
while  the  badger  is  larger  than  a  Manx  cat,  with  a 
shape  that  varies  according  to  the  exigencies  of  the 
situation.  Normally,  he  is  a  flattish,  fawn-coloured 
beast,  with  a  turtle-shaped  body,  little  round  head,  and 
small  legs  with  unusually  strong  claws.  Ride  after 
the  badger  across  the  prairie  and  he  stretches  out  in 
long,  lithe  shape,  resembling  a  baby  cougar,  turning  at 
every  pace  or  two  to  snap  at  your  horse,  then  off  again 
at  a  hulking  scramble  of  astonishing  speed.  Pour 
water  down  his  burrow  to  compel  him  to  come  up  or 
down,  and  he  swells  out  his  body,  completely  filling 
the  passage,  so  that  his  head,  which  is  downward,  is  in 
dry  air,  while  his  hind  quarters  alone  are  in  the  water. 
In  captivity  the  badger  is  a  business-like  little  body, 
with  very  sharp  teeth,  of  which  his  keeper  must  beware, 
and  some  of  the  tricks  of  the  skunk,  but  inclined,  on 
the  whole,  to  mind  his  affairs  if  you  will  mind  yours. 


WENUSK  THE  BADGER  237 

Once  a  day  regularly  every  afternoon  out  of  his  lair 
he  emerges  for  the  most  comical  sorts  of  athletic  ex 
ercises.  Hour  after  hour  he  will  trot  diagonally — be 
cause  that  gives  him  the  longest  run — from  corner  to 
corner  of  his  pen,  rearing  up  on  his  hind  legs  as  he 
reaches  one  corner,  rubbing  the  back  of  his  head,  then 
down  again  and  across  to  the  other  corner,  where  he 
repeats  the  performance.  There  can  be  no  reason  for 
the  badger  doing  this,  unless  it  was  his  habit  in  the 
wilds  when  he  trotted  about  leaving  dumb  signs  on 
mud  banks  and  brushwood  by  which  others  of  his  kind 
might  know  where  to  find  him  at  stated  times. 

Sunset  is  the  time  when  he  is  almost  sure  to  be 
among  the  gopher  burrows.  In  vain  the  saucy  jay 
shrieks  out  a  warning  to  the  gophers.  Of  all  the 
prairie  creatures,  they  are  the  stupidest,  the  most  beset 
with  curiosity  to  know  what  that  jay's  shriek  may 
mean.  Sunning  themselves  in  the  last  rays  of  daylight, 
the  gophers  perch  on  their  hind  legs  to  wait  develop 
ments  of  what  the  jay  announced.  But  the  badger's 
fur  and  the  gopher  mounds  are  almost  the  same  colour. 
He  has  pounced  on  some  playful  youngsters  before  the 
rest  see  him.  Then  there  is  a  wild  scuttling  down  to 
the  depths  of  the  burrows.  That,  too,  is  vain;  for  the 
badger  begins  ripping  up  the  clay  bank  like  a  grisly, 
down — down — in  pursuit,  two,  three,  five  feet,  even 
twelve. 

Then  is  seen  one  of  the  most  curious  freaks  in  all 
the  animal  life  of  the  prairie.  The  underground  gal 
leries  of  the  gophers  connect  and  lead  up  to  different 
exits.  As  the  furious  badger  comes  closer  and  closer 
on  the  cowering  gophers,  the  little  cowards  lose  heart, 
dart  up  the  galleries  to  open  doors,  and  try  to  escape 


238      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

through  the  grass  of  the  prairie.  But  no  sooner  is  the 
badger  hard  at  work  than  a  gray  form  seems  to  rise 
out  of  the  earth,  a  coyote  who  had  been  slinking  to 
the  rear  all  the  while;  and  as  the  terrified  gophers 
scurry  here,  scurry  there,  coyote's  white  teeth  snap! — 
snap  !  He  is  here — there — everywhere — pouncing — 
jumping — having  the  fun  of  his  life,  gobbling  gophers 
as  cats  catch  mice.  Down  in  the  bottom  of  the  burrow, 
the  badger  may  get  half  a  dozen  poor  cooped  huddling 
prisoners;  but  the  coyote  up  on  the  prairie  has  de 
voured  a  whole  colony. 

Do  these  two,  badger  and  coyote,  consciously  hunt 
together?  Some  old  trappers  vow  they  do — others  just 
as  vehemently  that  they  don't.  The  fact  remains  that 
wherever  the  badger  goes  gopher-hunting  on  an  un 
settled  prairie,  there  the  coyote  skulks  reaping  reward 
of  all  the  badger's  work.  The  coincidence  is  no 
stranger  than  the  well-known  fact  that  sword-fish  and 
thrasher — two  different  fish — always  league  together  to 
attack  the  whale. 

One  thing  only  can  save  the  gopher  colony,  and 
that  is  the  gun  barrel  across  yon  earth  mound  where  a 
trapper  lies  in  wait  for  the  coming  of  the  badger. 

IV 
The  'Coon 

Sir  Alexander  MacKenzie  reported  that  in  1798 
the  North-West  Company  sent  out  only  100  raccoon 
from  the  fur  country.  Last  year  the  city  of  St.  Paul 
alone  cured  115,000  'coon-skins.  What  brought  about 
the  change?  Simply  an  appreciation  of  the  qualities 
of  'coon,  which  combines  the  greatest  warmth  with 


THE  'COON  239 

the  lightest  weight  and  is  especially  adapted  for  a 
cold  climate  and  constant  wear.  What  was  said  of 
badger  applies  with  greater  force  to  'coon.  The 
'coon  in  the  East  is  associated  in  one's  mind  with 
cabbies,  in  the  West  with  fashionably  dressed  men 
and  women.  And  there  is  just  as  wide  a  difference 
in  the  quality  of  the  fur  as  in  the  quality  of  the 
people.  The  cabbies'  'coon  coat  is  a  rough  yellow 
fur  with  red  stripes.  The  Westerner's  'coon  is  a  silky 
brown  fur  with  black  stripes.  One  represents  the  fall 
hunt  of  men  and  boys  round  hollow  logs,  the  other  the 
midwinter  hunt  of  a  professional  trapper  in  the  Far 
North.  A  dog  usually  bays  the  'coon  out  of  hiding  in 
the  East.  Tiny  tracks,  like  a  child's  hand,  tell  the 
Northern  hunter  where  to  set  his  traps. 

Wahboos  the  rabbit,  musquash  the  musk-rat,  sikak 
the  skunk,  wenusk  the  badger,  and  the  common  'coon — • 
these  are  the  little  chaps  whose  hunt  fills  the  idle  days 
of  the  trapper's  busy  life.  At  night,  before  the  rough 
stone  hearth  which  he  has  built  in  his  cabin,  he  is 
still  busy  by  fire-light  preparing  their  pelts.  Each 
skin  must  be  stretched  and  cured.  Turning  the  skin 
fur  side  in,  the  trapper  pushes  into  the  pelt  a  wedge- 
shaped  slab  of  spliced  cedar.  Into  the  splice  he  shoves 
another  wedge  of  wood  which  he  hammers  in,  each 
blow  widening  the  space  and  stretching  the  skin.  All 
pelts  are  stretched  fur  in  but  the  fox.  Tacking  the 
stretched  skin  on  a  flat  board,  the  trapper  hangs  it  to 
dry  till  he  carries  all  to  the  fort;  unless,  indeed,  he 
should  need  a  garment  for  himself — cap,  coat,  or 
gantlets — in  which  case  he  takes  out  a  square  needle 
and  passes  his  evenings  like  a  tailor,  sewing. 


CHAPTEE  XVII 

THE  BARE  FUES — HOW  THE  TEAPPEE  TAKES  SAKWA- 
SEW  THE  MINK,  NEKIK  THE  OTTEE,  WUCHAK  THE 
FISHEE,  AND  WAPISTAN  THE  MAETEN 


Sakwaseiv  the  Mink 

THEEE  are  other  little  chaps  with  more  valuable 
fur  than  musquash,  whose  skin  seldom  attains  higher 
honour  than  inside  linings,  and  wahboos,  whose  snowy 
coat  is  put  to  the  indignity  of  imitating  ermine  with  a 
dotting  of  black  cat  for  the  ermine's  jet  tip.  There 
are  mink  and  otter  and  fisher  and  fox  and  ermine 
and  sable,  all  little  fellows  with  pelts  worth  their 
weight  in  coin  of  the  realm. 

On  one  of  those  idle  days  when  the  trapper  seems 
to  be  doing  nothing  but  lying  on  his  back  in  the  sun, 
he  has  witnessed  a  curious,  but  common,  battle  in 
pantomime  between  bird  and  beast.  A  prairie-hawk 
circles  and  drops,  lifts  and  wheels  again  with  monot 
onous  silent  persistence  above  the  swamp.  What 
quarry  does  he  seek,  this  lawless  forager  of  the  upper 
airs  still  hunting  a  hidden  nook  of  the  low  prairie? 
If  he  were  out  purely  for  exercise,  like  the  little  badger 
when  it  goes  rubbing  the  back  of  its  head  from  post  to 
post,  there  would  be  a  buzzing  of  wings  and  shrill 
lonely  callings  to  an  unseen  mate. 
240 


SAKWASEW  THE  MINK 

But  the  circling  hawk  is  as  silent  as  the  very  per 
sonification  of  death.  Apparently  he  can't  make  up 
his  mind  for  the  death-drop  on  some  rat  or  frog  down 
there  in  the  swamp.  The  trapper  notices  that  the 
hawk  keeps  circling  directly  above  the  place  where  the 
waters  of  the  swamp  tumble  from  the  ravine  in  a  small 
cataract  to  join  a  lower  river.  He  knows,  too,  from 
the  rich  orange  of  the  plumage  that  the  hawk  is  young. 
An  older  fellow  would  not  be  advertising  his  inten 
tions  in  this  fashion.  Besides,  an  older  hawk  would 
have  russet-gray  feathering.  Is  the  rascally  young 
hawk  meditating  a  clutch  of  talons  round  some  of 
the  unsuspecting  trout  that  usually  frequent  the 
quiet  pools  below  a  waterfall.  Or  does  he  aim  at 
bigger  game  ?  A  young  hawk  is  bold  with  the  courage 
that  has  not  yet  learned  the  wisdom  of  caution.  That 
is  why  there  are  so  many  more  of  the  brilliant  young 
red  hawks  in  our  museums  than  old  grizzled  gray  vet 
erans  whose  craft  circumvents  the  specimen  hunter's 
cunning.  Now  the  trapper  comes  to  have  as  keen  a 
sense  of  feel  for  all  the  creatures  of  the  wilds  as  the 
creatures  of  the  wilds  have  for  man;  so  he  shifts 
his  position  that  he  may  find  what  is  attracting  the 
hawk. 

Down  on  the  pebbled  beach  below  the  waterfalls  lies 
an  auburn  bundle  of  fur,  about  the  size  of  a  very  long, 
slim,  short-legged  cat,  still  as  a  stone — some  member 
of  the  weasel  family  gorged  torpid  with  fish,  stretched 
out  full  length  to  sleep  in  the  sun.  To  sleep,  ah,  yes, 
and  as  the  Danish  prince  said,  "perchance  to  dream"; 
for  all  the  little  fellows  of  river  and  prairie  take  good 
care  never  to  sleep  where  they  are  exposed  to  their 
countless  enemies.  This  sleep  of  the  weasel  arouses  the 
17 


242  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

man's  suspicion.  The  trapper  draws  out  his  field-glass. 
The  sleeper  is  a  mink,  and  its  sleep  is  a  sham  with 
beady,  red  eyes  blinking  a  deal  too  lively  for  real 
death.  Why  does  it  lie  on  its  back  rigid  and  straight 
as  if  it  were  dead  with  all  four  tiny  paws  clutched  out 
stiff?  The  trapper  scans  the  surface  of  the  swamp  to 
see  if  some  foolish  musk-rat  is  swimming  dangerously 
near  the  sleeping  mink. 

Presently  the  hawk  circles  lower — lower  ! — Drop 
straight  as  a  stone!  Its  talons  are  almost  in  the  mink's 
body,  when  of  a  sudden  the  sleeper  awakens — awakens 
— with  a  leap  of  the  four  stiff  little  feet  and  a  darting 
spear-thrust  of  snapping  teeth  deep  in  the  neck  of  the 
hawk!  At  first  the  hawk  rises  tearing  furiously  at  the 
clinging  mink  with  its  claws.  The  wings  sag.  Down 
bird  and  beast  fall.  Over  they  roll  on  the  sandy 
beach,  hawk  and  mink,  over  and  over  with  a  thrashing 
of  the  hawk's  wings  to  beat  the  treacherous  little 
vampire  off.  Now  the  blood-sucker  is  on  top  clutch 
ing — clutching !  Now  the  bird  flounders  up  craning 
his  neck  from  the  death-grip.  Then  the  hawk  falls  on 
his  back.  His  wings  are  prone.  They  cease  to  flutter. 

Eunning  to  the  bank  the  trapper  is  surprised  to  see 
the  little  blood-sucker  making  off  with  the  prey  instead 
of  deserting  it  as  all  creatures  akin  to  the  weasel  family 
usually  do.  That  means  a  family  of  mink  somewhere 
near,  to  be  given  their  first  lesson  in  bird-hunting,  in 
mink-hawking  by  the  body  of  this  poor,  dead,  foolish 
gyrfalcon. 

By  a  red  mark  here,  by  a  feather  there,  crushed 
grass  as  of  something  dragged,  a  little  webbed  foot 
print  on  the  wet  clay,  a  tiny  marking  of  double  dots 
where  the  feet  have  crossed  a  dry  stone,  the  trapper 


SAKWASEW  THE   MINK  243 

slowly  takes  up  the  trail  of  the  mink.  Mink  arc  not 
prime  till  the  late  fall.  Then  the  reddish  fur  assumes 
the  shades  of  the  russet  grasses  where  they  run  until 
the  white  of  winter  covers  the  land.  Then — as  if 
nature  were  to  exact  avengement  for  all  the  red 
slaughter  the  mink  has  wrought  during  the  rest  of  the 
year — his  coat  becomes  dark  brown,  almost  black,  the 
very  shade  that  renders  him  most  conspicuous  above 
snow  to  all  the  enemies  of  the  mink  world.  But  while 
the  trapper  has  no  intention  of  destroying  what  would 
be  worthless  now  but  will  be  valuable  in  the  winter,  it 
is  not  every  day  that  even  a  trapper  has  a  chance  to 
trail  a  mink  back  to  its  nest  and  see  the  young  family. 
But  suddenly  the  trail  stops.  Here  is  a  sandy 
patch  with  some  tumbled  stones  under  a  tangle  of 
grasses  and  a  rivulet  not  a  foot  away.  Ah — there  it 
is — a  nest  or  lair,  a  tiny  hole  almost  hidden  by  the 
rushes !  But  the  nest  seems  empty.  Fast  as  the 
trapper  has  come,  the  mink  came  faster  and  hid  her 
family.  To  one  side,  the  hawk  had  been  dropped 
among  the  rushes.  The  man  pokes  a  stick  in  the  lair 
but  finds  nothing.  Putting  in  his  hand,  he  is  dragging 
out  bones,  feathers,  skeleton  musk-rats,  putrid  frogs, 
promiscuous  remnants  of  other  quarries  brought  to  the 
burrow  by  the  mink,  when  a  little  cattish  s-p-i-t! 
almost  touches  his  hand.  His  palm  closes  over  some 
thing  warm,  squirming,  smaller  than  a  kitten  with 
very  downy  fur,  on  a  soft  mouse-like  skin,  eyes  that 
are  still  blind  and  a  tiny  mouth  that  neither  meows 
nor  squeaks,  just  spits! — spits! — spits! — in  impotent 
viperish  fury.  All  the  other  minklets,  the  mother  had 
succeeded  in  hiding  under  the  grasses,  but  somehow 
this  one  had  been  left.  Will  he  take  it  home  and  try 


244       THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

the  experiment  of  rearing  a  young  mink  with  a  family 
of  kittens? 

The  trapper  calls  to  mind  other  experiments. 
There  was  the  little  beaver  that  chewed  up  his  canoe 
and  gnawed  a  hole  of  escape  through  the  door.  There 
were  the  three  little  bob-cats  left  in  the  woods  behind 
his  cabin  last  year  when  he  refrained  from  setting  out 
traps  and  tied  up  his  dog  to  see  if  he  could  not  catch 
the  whole  family,  mother  and  kittens,  for  an  Eastern 
museum.  Furtively  at  first,  the  mother  had  come  to 
feed  her  kittens.  Then  the  man  had  put  out  rugs  to 
keep  the  kittens  warm  and  lain  in  wait  for  the  mother; 
but  no  sooner  did  she  see  her  offspring  comfortably 
cared  for,  than  she  deserted  them  entirely,  evidently 
acting  on  the  proverb  that  the  most  gracious  enemy  is 
the  most  dangerous,  or  else  deciding  that  the  kits  were 
so  well  off  that  she  was  not  needed.  Adopting  the 
three  little  wild-cats,  the  trapper  had  reared  them  past 
blind-eyes,  past  colic  and  dumps  and  all  the  youthful 
ills  to  which  live  kittens  are  heirs,  when  trouble  began. 
The  longing  for  the  wilds  came.  Even  catnip  green 
and  senna  tea  boiled  can't  cure  that.  So  keenly  did  the 
gipsy  longing  come  to  one  little  bob  that  he  perished 
escaping  to  the  woods  by  way  of  the  chimney  flue.  The 
second  little  bob  succeeded  in  escaping  through  a 
parchment  stop-gap  that  served  the  trapper  as  a 
window.  And  the  third  bobby  dealt  such  an  ill-tem 
pered  gash  to  the  clog's  nose  that  the  combat  ended 
in  instant  death  for  the  cat. 

Thinking  over  these  experiments,  the  trapper  wisely 
puts  the  mink  back  in  the  nest  with  words  which  it 
would  have  been  well  for  that  litle  ball  of  down  to  have 
understood.  He  told  it  he  would  come  back  for  it  next 


SAKWASEW  THE  MINK  245 

winter  and  to  be  sure  to  have  its  best  black  coat  on. 
For  the  little  first-year  minks  wear  dark  coats,  almost 
as  fine  as  Eussian  sable.  Yes — he  reflects,  poking  it 
back  to  the  hole  and  retreating  quickly  so  that  the 
mother  will  return — better  leave  it  till  the  winter;  for 
wasn't  it  Koot  who  put  a  mink  among  his  kittens,  only 
to  have  the  little  viper  set  on  them  with  tooth  and 
claw  as  soon  as  its  eyes  opened?  Also  mink  are  bad 
neighbours  to  a  poultry-yard.  Forty  chickens  in  a  sin 
gle  night  will  the  little  mink  destroy,  not  for  food  but 
— to  quote  man's  words — for  the  zest  of  the  sport.  The 
mink,  you  must  remember,  like  other  pot-hunters,  can 
boast  of  a  big  bag. 

The  trapper  did  come  back  next  fall.  It  was  when 
he  was  ranging  all  the  swamp-lands  for  beaver-dams. 
Swamp  lands  often  mean  beaver-dams;  and  trappers 
always  note  what  stops  the  current  of  a  sluggish 
stream.  Frequently  it  is  a  beaver  colony  built  across 
a  valley  in  the  mountains,  or  stopping  up  the  outlet  of 
a  slough.  The  trapper  was  sleeping  under  his  canoe 
on  the  banks  of  the  river  where  the  swamp  tumbled 
out  from  the  ravine.  Before  retiring  to  what  was  a 
boat  by  day  and  a  bed  by  night,  he  had  set  out  a  fish 
net  and  some  loose  lines — which  the  flow  of  the  cur 
rent  would  keep  in  motion — below  the  waterfall.  Care 
lessly,  next  day,  he  threw  the  fish-heads  among  the 
stones.  The  second  morning  he  found  such  a  multi 
tude  of  little  tracks  dotting  the  rime  of  the  hoar  frost 
that  he  erected  a  tent  back  from  the  waterfalls,  and 
decided  to  stay  trapping  there  till  the  winter.  The 
fish-heads  were  no  longer  thrown  away.  They  were 
left  among  the  stones  in  small  steel-traps  weighted 
with  other  stones,  or  attached  to  a  loose  stick  that 


246  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

would  impede  flight.  And  if  the  poor  gyrfalcon  could 
have  seen  the  mink  held  by  the  jaws  of  a  steel-trap, 
hissing,  snarling,  breaking  its  teeth  on  the  iron,  spit 
ting  out  all  the  rage  of  its  wicked  nature,  the  bird 
would  have  been  avenged. 

And  as  winter  deepened,  the  quality  of  minks 
taken  from  the  traps  became  darker,  silkier,  crisper, 
almost  brown  black  in  some  of  the  young,  but  for 
light  fur  on  the  under  lip.  The  Indians  say  that 
sakwasew  the  mink  would  sell  his  family  for  a  fish, 
and  as  long  as  fish  lay  among  the  stones,  the  trapper 
gathered  his  harvest  of  fur:  reddish  mink  that  would 
be  made  into  little  neck  ruffs  and  collar  pieces,  reddish 
brown  mink  that  would  be  sewed  into  costly  coats  and 
cloaks,  rare  brownish  black  mink  that  would  be  put 
into  the  beautiful  flat  scarf  collars  almost  as  costly  as 
a  full  coat.  And  so  the  mink-hunt  went  on  merrily 
for  the  man  till  the  midwinter  lull  came  at  Christmas. 
For  that  year  the  mink-hunt  was  over. 

II 
Nekik  the  Otter 

Sakwasew  was  not  the  only  fisher  at  the  pool  below 
the  falls.  On  one  of  those  idle  days  when  the  trapper 
sat  lazily  by  the  river  side,  a  round  head  slightly  sun 
burned  from  black  to  russet  had  hobbled  up  to  the  sur 
face  of  the  water,  peered  sharply  at  the  man  sitting  so 
still,  paddled  little  flipper-like  feet  about,  then  clucked 
down  again.  Motionless  as  the  mossed  log  under  him 
sits  the  man;  and  in  a  moment  up  comes  the  little 'black 
head  again,  round  as  a  golf  ball,  about  the  size  of  a 
very  large  cat,  followed  by  three  other  little  bobbing 


NEKIK  THE  OTTER 

heads — a  mother  otter  teaching  her  habies  to  dive  and 
swim  and  duck  from  the  river  surface  to  the  burrows 
below  the  water  along  the  river  bank.  Perhaps  the 
trapper  has  found  a  dead  fish  along  this  very  bank  with 
only  the  choice  portions  of  the  body  eaten — a  sure  sign 
that  nekik  the  otter,  the  little  epicure  of  the  water 
world,  has  been  fishing  at  this  river.  > 

With  a  scarcely  perceptible  motion,  the  man  turns 
his  head  to  watch  the  swimmers.  Instantly,  down  they 
plunge,  mother  and  babies,  to  come  to  the  surface 
again  higher  up-stream,  evidently  working  up-current 
like  the  beaver  in  spring  for  a  glorious  frolic  in  the 
cold  clear  waters  of  the  upper  sources.  At  one  place 
on  the  sandy  beach  they  all  wade  ashore.  The  man 
utters  a  slight  "Hiss!"  Away  they  scamper,  the 
foolish  youngsters,,  landward  instead  of  to  the  safe 
water  as  the  hesitating  mother  would  have  them  do, 
all  the  little  feet  scrambling  over  the  sand  with  the 
funny  short  steps  of  a  Chinese  lady  in  tight  boots. 
Maternal  care  proves  stronger  than  fear.  The  fright 
ened  mother  follows  the  young  otter  and  will  no  doubt 
read  them  a  sound  lecture  on  land  dangers  when  she 
has  rounded  them  back  to  the  safe  water  higher  up 
stream. 

Of  all  wild  creatures,  none  is  so  crafty  in  conceal 
ing  its  lairs  as  the  otter.  Where  did  this  family  come 
from?  They  had  not  been  swimming  up-stream;  for 
the  man  had  been  watching  on  the  river  bank  long  be 
fore  they  appeared  on  the  surface.  Stripping,  the 
trapper  dives  in  mid-stream,  then  half  wades,  half 
swims  along  the  steepest  bank,  running  his  arm  against 
the  clay  cliff  to  find  a  burrow.  On  land  he  could  not  do 
this  at  the  lair  of  the  otter;  for  the  smell  of  the 


24:8  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

man-touch  would  be  left  on  his  trail,  and  the  otter, 
keener  of  scent  and  fear  than  the  mink,  would  take 
alarm.  But  for  the  same  reason  that  the  river  is  the 
safest  refuge  for  the  otter,  it  is  the  surest  hunt 
ing  for  the  man — water  does  not  keep  the  scent  of 
a  trail.  So  the  man  runs  his  arm  along  the  bank.  The 
river  is  the  surest  hunting  for  the  man,  but  not  the 
safest.  If  an  old  male  were  in  the  bank  burrow  now, 
or  happened  to  be  emerging  from  grass-lined  subter 
ranean  air  chambers  above  the  bank  gallery,  it  might 
be  serious  enough  for  the  exploring  trapper.  One  bite 
of  nekik  the  otter  has  crippled  many  an  Indian. 
Knowing  from  the  remnants  of  half-eaten  fish  and 
from  the  holes  in  the  bank  that  he  has  found  an  otter 
runway,  the  man  goes  home  as  well  satisfied  as  if  he 
had  done  a  good  day's  work. 

And  so  that  winter  when  he  had  camped  below  the 
swamp  for  the  mink-hunt,  the  trapper  was  not  sur 
prised  one  morning  to  find  a  half-eaten  fish  on  the 
river  bank.  Sakwasew  the  mink  takes  good  care  to 
leave  no  remnants  of  his  greedy  meal.  What  he  can 
not  eat  he  caches.  Even  if  he  has  strangled  a  dozen 
water-rats  in  one  hunt,  they  will  be  dragged  in  a  heap 
and  covered.  The  half-eaten  fish  left  exposed  is  not 
mink's  work.  Otter  has  been  here  and  otter  will  come 
back;  for  as  the  frost  hardens,  only  those  pools  below 
the  falls  keep  free  from  ice.  No  use  setting  traps  with 
fish-heads  as  long  as  fresh  fish  are  to  be  had  for  the 
taking.  Besides,  the  man  has  done  nothing  to  conceal 
his  tracks;  and  each  morning  the  half-eaten  fish  lie 
farther  off  the  line  of  the  man-trail. 

By-and-bye  the  man  notices  that  no  more  half-eaten 
fish  are  on  his  side  of  the  river.  Little  tracks  of 


NEKIK  THE  OTTER  249 

webbed  feet  furrowing  a  deep  rut  in  the  soft  snow  of 
the  frozen  river  tell  that  nekik  has  taken  alarm  and 
is  fishing  from  the  other  side.  And  when  Christmas 
comes  with  a  dwindling  of  the  mink-hunt,  the  man, 
too,  crosses  to  the  other  side.  Here  he  finds  that  the 
otter  tracks  have  worn  a  path  that  is  almost  a  tobog 
gan  slide  down  the  crusted  snow  bank  to  the  iced  edge 
of  the  pool.  By  this  time  nekik's  pelt  is  prime,  almost 
black,  and  as  glossy  as  floss.  By  this  time,  too,  the 
fish  are  scarce  and  the  epicure  has  become  ravenous  as 
a  pauper.  One  night  when  the  trapper  was  recon 
noitring  the  fish  hole,  he  had  approached  the  snow 
bank  so  noiselessly  that  he  came  on  a  whole  colony  of 
otters  without  their  knowledge  of  his  presence.  Down 
the  snow  bank  they  tumbled,  head-first,  tail-first, 
slithering  through  the  snow  with  their  little  paws 
braced,  rolling  down  on  their  backs  like  lads  upset  from 
a  toboggan,  otter  after  otter,  till  the  man  learned  that 
the  little  beasts  were  not  fishing  at  all,  but  coasting 
the  snow  bank  like  youngsters  on  a  night  frolic.  No 
sooner  did  one  reach  the  bottom  than  up  he  scampered 
to  repeat  the  fun;  and  sometimes  two  or  three  went 
down  in  a  rolling  bunch  mixed  up  at  the  foot  of  a  slide 
as  badly  as  a  couple  of  toboggans  that  were  unpre- 
meditatedly  changing  their  occupants.  Bears  wrestle. 
The  kittens  of  all  the  cat  tribe  play  hide  and  seek. 
Little  badger  finds  it  fun  to  run  round  rubbing  the 
back  of  his  head  on  things;  and  here  was  nekik  the 
otter  at  the  favourite  amusement  of  his  kind — coasting 
down  a  snow  bank. 

If  the  trapper  were  an  Indian,  he  would  lie  in  wait 
at  the  landing-place  and  spear  the  otter  as  they  came 
from  the  water.  But  the  white  man's  craft  is  deeper. 


250  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

He  does  not  wish  to  frighten  the  otter  till  the  last  has 
been  taken.  Coming  to  the  slide  by  day,  he  baits  a  steel- 
trap  with  fish  and  buries  it  in  the  snow  just  where  the 
otter  will  be  coming  down  the  hill  or  up  from  the  pool. 
Perhaps  he  places  a  dozen  such  traps  around  the  hole 
with  nothing  visible  but  the  frozen  fish  lying  on  the 
surface.  If  he  sets  his  traps  during  a  snow-fall,  so 
much  the  better.  His  own  tracks  will  be  obliterated 
and  the  otter's  nose  will  discover  the  fish.  Then  he 
takes  a  bag  filled  with  some  substance  of  animal  odour, 
pomatum,  fresh  meat,  pork,  or  he  may  use  the  flesh 
side  of  a  fresh  deer-hide.  This  he  drags  over  the  snow 
where  he  has  stepped.  He  may  even  use  a  fresh  hide 
to  handle  the  traps,  as  a  waiter  uses  a  serviette  to  pass 
plates.  There  must  be  no  man-smell,  no  man-track 
near  the  otter  traps. 

While  the  mink-hunt  is  fairly  over  by  midwinter, 
otter-trapping  lasts  from  October  to  May.  The  value 
of  all  rare  furs,  mink,  otter,  marten,  ermine,  varies  with 
two  tilings:  (1)  the  latitude  of  the  hunting-field;  (2) 
the  season  of  the  hunt.  For  instance,  ask  a  trapper  of 
Minnesota  or  Lake  Superior  what  he  thinks  of  the 
ermine,  and  he  will  tell  you  that  it  is  a  miserable  sort 
of  weasel  of  a  dirty  drab  brown  not  worth  twenty-five 
cents  a  skin.  Ask  a  trapper  of  the  North  Saskatche 
wan  what  he  thinks  of  ermine;  and  he  will  tell  you 
it  is  a  pretty  little  whitish  creature  good  for  fur  if 
trapped  late  enough  in  the  winter  and  always  useful  as 
a  lining.  But  ask  a  trapper  of  the  Arctic  about  the 
ermine,  and  he  describes  it  as  the  finest  fur  that  is 
taken  except  the  silver  fox,  white  and  soft  as  swan's- 
down,  with  a  tail-tip  like  black  onyx.  This  difference 
in  the  fur  of  the  animal  explains  the  wide  variety  of 


WUCHAK  THE  FISHER,  OR  PEKAN  251 

prices  paid.  Ermine  not  worth  twenty-five  cents  in 
Wisconsin  might  be  worth  ten  times  as  much  on  the 
Saskatchewan. 

So  it  is  with  the  otter.  All  trapped  between  lati 
tude  thirty-five  and  sixty  is  good  fur;  and  the  best  is 
that  taken  toward  the  end  of  winter  when  scarcely  a 
russet  hair  should  be  found  in  the  long  over-fur  of 
nekik's  coat. 

Ill 
Wuchak  the  Fisher,  or  Pekan 

Wherever  the  waste  of  fish  or  deer  is  thrown,  there 
will  be  found  lines  of  double  tracks  not  so  large  as  the 
wild-cat's,,  not  so  small  as  the  otter's,  and  without  the 
same  webbing  as  the  mink's.  This  is  wuchak  the 
fisher,  or  pekan,  commonly  called  "  the  black  cat " — 
who,  in  spite  of  his  fishy  name,  hates  water  as  cats 
hate  it.  And  the  tracks  are  double  because  pekan 
travel  in  pairs.  He  is  found  along  the  banks  of 
streams  because  he  preys  on  fish  and  fisher,  on  mink 
and  otter  and  musk-rat,  on  frogs  and  birds  and 
creatures  that  come  to  drink.  He  is,  after  all,  a  very 
greedy  fellow,  not  at  all  particular  about  his  diet,  and, 
like  all  gluttons,  easily  snared.  While  mink  and  otter 
are  about,  the  trapper  will  waste  no  steel-traps  on 
pekan.  A  deadfall  will  act  just  as  effectively;  but 
there  is  one  point  requiring  care.  Pekan  has  a  sharp 
nose.  It  is  his  nose  that  brings  him  to  all  carrion  just 
as  surely  as  hawks  come  to  pick  dead  bones.  But  that 
same  nose  will  tell  him  of  man's  presence.  So  when 
the  trapper  has  built  his  pen  of  logs  so  that  the  front 
log  or  deadfall  will  crush  down  on  the  back  of  an  in 
truder  tugging  at  the  bait  inside,  he  overlays  all  with 


252  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

leaves  and  brush  to  quiet  the  pekan's  suspicions.  Be 
sides,  the  pekan  has  many  tricks  akin  to  the  wolverine. 
He  is  an  inveterate  thief.  There  is  a  well-known  in 
stance  of  Hudson's  Bay  trappers  having  a  line  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  marten  traps  stretching  for  fifty 
miles  robbed  of  their  bait  by  pekan.  The  men  short 
ened  the  line  to  thirty  miles  and  for  six  times  in  suc 
cession  did  pekan  destroy  the  traps.  Then  the  men  set 
themselves  to  trap  the  robber.  He  will  rifle  a  deadfall 
from  the  slanting  back  roof  where  there  is  no  danger; 
so  the  trapper  overlays  the  back  with  heavy  brush. 

Pekan  do  not  yield  a  rare  fur;  but  they  are  always 
at  run  where  the  trapper  is  hunting  the  rare  furs,  and 
for  that  reason  are  usually  snared  at  the  same  time  as 
mink  and  otter. 

IV 
Wapistan  the  Marten 

When  Koot  went  blind  on  his  way  home  from  the 
rabbit-hunt,  he  had  intended  to  set  out  for  the  pine 
woods.  Though  blizzards  still  howl  over  the  prairie, 
by  March  the  warm  sun  of  midday  has  set  the  sap  of 
the  forests  stirring  and  all  the  woodland  life  awakens 
from  its  long  winter  sleep.  Cougar  and  lynx  and  bear 
rove  through  the  forest  ravenous  with  spring  hunger. 
Otter,  too,  may  be  found  where  the  ice  mounds  of  a 
waterfall  are  beginning  to  thaw.  But  it  is  not  any  of 
these  that  the  trapper  seeks.  If  they  cross  his  path, 
good — they,  too,  will  swell  his  account  at  the  fur  post. 
It  is  another  of  the  little  chaps  that  he  seeks,  a  little, 
long,  low-set  animal  whose  fur  is  now  glistening  bright 
on  the  deep  dark  overhairs,  soft  as  down  in  the  thick 
fawn  underhairs,  wapistan  the  marten. 


WAPISTAN  THE  MARTEN  253 

When  the  forest  begins  to  stir  with  the  coming  of 
spring,  wapistan  stirs  too,  crawling  out  from  the  hollow 
of  some  rotten  pine  log,  restless  with  the  same  blood- 
thirst  that  set  the  little  mink  playing  his  tricks  on  the 
hawk.  And  yet  the  marten  is  not  such  a  little  viper  as 
the  mink.  Wapistan  will  eat  leaves  and  nuts  and  roots 
if  he  can  get  vegetable  food,  but  failing  these,  that 
ravenous  spring  hunger  of  his  must  be  appeased  with 
something  else.  And  out  he  goes  from  his  log  hole 
hunger-bold  as  the  biggest  of  all  other  spring  ravagers. 
That  boldness  gives  the  trapper  his  chance  at  the  very 
time  when  wapistan' s  fur  is  best.  All  winter  the  trap 
per  may  have  taken  marten;  but  the  end  of  winter  is 
the  time  when  wapistan  wanders  freely  from  cover. 
Thus  the  trapper's  calendar  would  have  months  of 
musk-rat  first,  then  beaver  and  mink  and  pekan  and 
bear  and  fox  and  ermine  and  rabbit  and  lynx  and 
marten,  with  a  long  idle  midsummer  space  when  he 
goes  to  the  fort  for  the  year's  provisions  and  gathers 
the  lore  of  his  craft. 

Wapistan  is  not  hard  to  track.  Being  much  longer 
and  heavier  than  a  cat  with  very  short  legs  and  small 
feet,  his  body  almost  drags  the  ground  and  his  tracks 
sink  deep,  clear,  and  sharp.  His  feet  are  smaller  than 
otter's  and  mink's,  but  easily  distinguishable  from  those 
two  fishers.  The  water  animal  leaves  a  spreading  foot 
print,  the  mark  of  the  webbed  toes  without  any  fur  on 
the  padding  of  the  toe-balls.  The  land  animal  of  the 
same  size  has  clear  cut,  narrower,  heavier  marks.  By 
March,  these  dotting  foot-tracks  thread  the  snow 
everywhere. 

Coming  on  marten  tracks  at  a  pine  log,  the  trap 
per  sends  in  his  dog  or  prods  with  a  stick.  Finding 


254  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

nothing,  he  baits  a  steel-trap  with  pomatum,  covers  it 
deftly  with  snow,  drags  the  decoy  skin  about  to  conceal 
his  own  tracks,  and  goes  away  in  the  hope  that  the 
marten  will  come  back  to  this  log  to  guzzle  on  his  prey 
and  sleep. 

If  the  track  is  much  frequented,  or  the  forest  over 
run  with  marten  tracks,  the  trapper  builds  deadfalls, 
many  of  them  running  from  tree  to  tree  for  miles 
through  the  forest  in  a  circle  whose  circuit  brings  him 
back  to  his  cabin.  Remnants  of  these  log  traps  may  be 
seen  through  all  parts  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  forests. 
Thirty  to  forty  traps  are  considered  a  day's  work  for 
one  man,  six  or  ten  marten  all  that  he  expects  to  take 
in  one  round;  but  when  marten  are  plentiful,  the  un 
used  traps  of  to-day  may  bring  a  prize  to-morrow. 

The  Indian  trapper  would  use  still  another  kind  of 
trap.  Where  the  tracks  are  plainly  frequently  used 
runways  to  watering-places  or  lair  in  hollow  tree,  the 
Indian  digs  a  pit  across  the  marten's  trail.  On  this  he 
spreads  brush  in  such  roof  fashion  that  though  the 
marten  is  a  good  climber,  if  once  he  falls  in,  it  is  al 
most  impossible  for  him  to  scramble  out.  If  a  poor 
cackling  grouse  or  "  fool-hen  "  be  thrust  into  the  pit, 
the  Indian  is  almost  sure  to  find  a  prisoner.  This  seems 
to  the  white  man  a  barbarous  kind  of  trapping;  but  the 
poor  "  fool-hen,"  hunted  by  all  the  creatures  of  the 
forest,  never  seems  to  learn  wisdom,  but  invites  dis 
aster  by  popping  out  of  the  brush  to  stare  at  every 
living  thing  that  passes.  If  she  did  not  fall  a  victim 
in  the  pit,  she  certainly  would  to  her  own  curiosity 
above  ground.  To  the  steel-trap  the  hunter  attaches 
a  piece  of  log  to  entangle  the  prisoner's  flight  as  he 
yushes  through  the  underbush.  Once  caught  in  the 


WAPISTAN  THE  MARTEN  255 

steel  jaws,  little  wapistan  must  wait — wait  for  what? 
For  the  same  thing  that  comes  to  the  poor  "  fool-hen  " 
when  wapistan  goes  crashing  through  the  brush  after 
her;  for  the  same  thing  that  comes  to  the  baby  squir 
rels  when  wapistan  climbs  a  tree  to  rob  the  squirrel's 
nest,  eat  the  young,  and  live  in  the  rifled  house;  for  the 
same  thing  that  comes  to  the  hoary  marmot  whistling 
his  spring  tune  just  outside  his  rocky  den  when  wapis 
tan,  who  has  climbed  up,  pounces  down  from  above. 
Little  death-dealer  he  has  been  all  his  life;  and  now 
death  comes  to  him  for  a  nobler  cause  than  the  stuffing 
of  a  greedy  maw — for  the  clothing  of  a  creature  nobler 
than  himself — man. 

The  otter  can  protect  himself  by  diving,  even  div 
ing  under  snow.  The  mink  has  craft  to  hide  himself 
under  leaves  so  that  the  sharpest  eyes  cannot  detect 
him.  Both  mink  and  otter  furs  have  very  little  of  that 
animal  smell  which  enables  the  foragers  to  follow  their 
trail.  What  gift  has  wapistan,  the  marten,  to  protect 
himself  against  all  the  powers  that  prey?  His  strength 
and  his  wisdom  lie  in  the  little  stubby  feet.  These  can 
climb. 

A  trapper's  dog  had  stumbled  on  a  marten  in  a 
stump  hole.  A  snap  of  the  marten's  teeth  sent  the  dog 
back  with  a  jump.  Wapistan  will  hang  on  to  the  nose 
of  a  dog  to  the  death;  and  trappers'  dogs  grow  cautious. 
Before  the  dog  gathered  courage  to  make  another  rush, 
the  marten  escaped  by  a  rear  knot-hole,  getting  the 
start  of  his  enemy  by  fifty  yards.  Off  they  raced,  the 
dog  spending  himself  in  fury,  the  marten  keeping 
under  the  thorny  brush  where  his  enemy  could  not 
follow,  then  across  open  snow  where  the  dog  gained, 
then  into  the  pine  woods  where  the  trail  ended  on  the 


256  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

snow.  Where  had  the  fugitive  gone?  When  the  man 
came  up,  he  first  searched  for  log  holes.  There  were 
none.  Then  he  lifted  some  of  the  rocks.  There  was  no 
trace  of  wapistan.  But  the  dog  kept  baying  a  special 
tree,  a  blasted  trunk,  bare  as  a  mast  pole  and  seemingly 
impossible  for  any  animal  but  a  squirrel  to  climb. 
Knowing  the  trick  by  which  creatures  like  the  bob-cat 
can  flatten  their  body  into  a  resemblance  of  a  tree 
trunk,  the  trapper  searched  carefully  all  round  the 
bare  trunk.  It  was  not  till  many  months  afterward 
when  a  wind  storm  had  broken  the  tree  that  he  dis 
covered  the  upper  part  had  been  hollow.  Into  this 
eerie  nook  the  pursued  marten  had  scrambled  and 
waited  in  safety  till  dog  and  man  retired. 

In  one  of  his  traps  the  man  finds  a  peculiarly  short 
specimen  of  the  marten.  In  the  vernacular  of  the  craft 
this  marten's  bushy  tail  will  not  reach  as  far  back  as 
his  hind  legs  can  stretch.  Widely  different  from  the 
mink's  scarcely  visible  ears,  this  fellow's  ears  are 
sharply  upright,  keenly  alert.  He  is  like  a  fox,  where 
the  mink  resembles  a  furred  serpent.  Marten  moves, 
springs,  jumps  like  an  animal.  Mink  glides  like  a 
snake.  Marten  has  the  strong  neck  of  an  animal 
fighter.  Mink  has  the  long,  thin,  twisting  neck  which 
reptiles  need  to  give  them  striking  power  for  their 
fangs.  Mink's  under  lip  has  a  mere  rim  of  white  or 
yellow.  Marten's  breast  is  patched  sulphur.  But  this 
short  marten  with  a  tail  shorter  than  other  marten 
differs  from  his  kind  as  to  fur.  Both  mink  and  marten 
fur  are  reddish  brown;  but  this  short  marten's  fur  is 
almost  black,  of  great  depth,  of  great  thickness,  and  of 
three  qualities:  (1)  There  are  the  long  dark  overhairs 
the  same  as  the  ordinary  marten,  only  darker,  thicker, 


WAPISTAN  THE  MARTEN  257 

deeper;  (2)  there  is  the  soft  under  fur  of  the  ordinary 
marten,  usually  fawn,  in  this  fellow  deep  brown;  (3) 
there  is  the  skin  fur  resembling  chicken-down,  of  which 
this  little  marten  has  such  a  wealth — to  use  a  technical 
expression — you  cannot  find  his  scalp.  Without  going 
into  the  old  quarrel  about  species,  when  a  marten  has 
these  peculiarities,  he  is  known  to  the  trapper  as  sable. 
Whether  he  is  the  American  counterpart  to  the 
Russia  sable  is  a  disputed  point.  Whether  his  superior 
qualities  are  owing  to  age,  climate,  species,  it  is  enough 
for  the  trapper  to  know  that  short,  dark  marten  yields 
the  trade — sable. 


18 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

UNDER    THE    NORTH    STAR — WHERE    FOX    AND    ERMINE 

RUN 


Of  Foxes,  Many  and  Various— Red,  Cross,  Silver,  Black, 
Prairie,  Kit  or  Swift,  Arctic,  Blue,  and  Gray 

WHEREVER  grouse  and  rabbit  abound,  there  will 
foxes  run  and  there  will  the  hunter  set  steel-traps. 
But  however  beautiful  a  fox-skin  may  be  as  a  specimen, 
it  has  value  as  a  fur  only  when  it  belongs  to  one  of 
three  varieties — Arctic,  black,  and  silver.  Other  foxes — 
red,  cross,  prairie,  swift,  and  gray — the  trapper  will  take 
when  they  cross  his  path  and  sell  them  in  the  gross  at 
the  fur  post,  as  he  used  to  barter  buffalo-hides.  But 
the  hunter  who  traps  the  fox  for  its  own  sake,  and  not 
as  an  uncalculated  extra  to  the  mink-hunt  or  the 
beaver  total,  must  go  to  the  Far  North,  to  the  land  of 
winter  night  and  midnight  sun,  to  obtain  the  best  fox- 
skins. 

It  matters  not  to  the  trapper  that  the  little  kit  fox 
or  swift  at  run  among  the  hills  between  the  Missouri 
and  Saskatchewan  is  the  most  shapely  of  all  the  fox 
kind,  with  as  finely  pointed  a  nose  as  a  spitz  dog,  ears 
alert  as  a  terrier's  and  a  brush,  more  like  a  lady's  gray 
feather  boa  than  fur,  curled  round  his  dainty  toes. 
Little  kit's  fur  is  a  grizzled  gray  shading  to  mottled 
258 


OF   FOXES,  MANY  AND   VARIOUS  259 

fawn.  The  hairs  arc  coarse,  horsey,  indistinctly 
marked,  and  the  fur  is  of  small  value  to  the  trader; 
so  dainty  little  swift,  who  looks  as  if  nature  made  him 
for  a  pet  dog  instead  of  a  fox,  is  slighted  by  the  hunter, 
unless  kit  persists  in  tempting  a  trap.  Rufus  the  red 
fellow,  with  his  grizzled  gray  head  and  black  ears  and 
whitish  throat  and  flaunting  purplish  tinges  down  his 
sides  like  a  prince  royal,  may  make  a  handsome  mat; 
but  as  a  fur  he  is  of  little  worth.  His  cousin  with  the 
black  fore  feet,  the  prairie  fox,  who  is  the  largest  and 
strongest  and  scientifically  finest  of  all  his  kind,  has 
more  value  as  a  fur.  The  colour  of  the  prairie  fox 
shades  rather  to  pale  ochre  and  yellow  that  the  nonde 
script  grizzled  gray  that  is  of  so  little  value  as  a  fur. 
Of  the  silver-gray  fox  little  need  be  said.  He  lives 
too  far  south — California  and  Texas  and  Mexico — to 
acquire  either  energy  or  gloss.  He  is  the  one  indolent 
member  of  the  fox  tribe,  and  his  fur  lacks  the  sheen 
that  only  winter  cold  can  give.  The  value  of  the 
cross  fox  depends  on  the  markings  that  give  him  his 
name.  If  the  bands,  running  diagonally  over  his 
shoulders  in  the  shape  of  a  cross,  shade  to  grayish 
blue  he  is  a  prize,  if  to  reddish  russet,  he  is  only  a 
curiosity. 

The  Arctic  and  black  and  silver  foxes  have  the 
pelts  that  at  their  worst  equal  the  other  rare  furs,  at 
their  best  exceed  the  value  of  all  other  furs  by  so 
much  that  the  lucky  trapper  who  takes  a  silver  fox  has 
made  his  fortune.  These,  then,  are  the  foxes  that  the 
trapper  seeks  and  these  are  to  be  found  only  on  the 
white  wastes  of  the  polar  zone. 

That  brings  up  the  question — what  is  a  silver  fox? 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  neither  scientist  nor  hunter 


260  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

can  answer  that  question.  Nor  will  study  of  all  the 
park  specimens  in  the  world  tell  the  secret,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  only  an  Arctic  climate  can  pro 
duce  a  silver  fox;  and  parks  are  not  established  in 
the  Arctics  yet.  It  is  quite  plain  that  the  prairie  fox 
is  in  a  class  by  himself.  The  uniformity  of  his  size,  his 
strength,  his  habits,  his  appearance,  distinguish  him 
from  other  foxes.  It  is  quite  plain  that  the  little  kit 
fox  or  swift  is  of  a  kind  distinct  from  other  foxes. 
His  smallness,  the  shape  of  his  bones,  the  cast  of  his 
face,  the  trick  of  sitting  rather  than  lying,  that  won 
derful  big  bushy  soft  tail  of  which  a  peacock  might 
be  vain — all  differentiate  him  from  other  foxes.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  the  Arctic  fox  with  a  pelt  that  is 
more  like  white  wool  than  hairs  of  fur.  He  is  much 
smaller  than  the  red.  His  tail  is  bushier  and  larger 
than  the  swift,  and  like  all  Arctic  creatures,  he  has 
the  soles  of  his  feet  heavily  furred.  All  this  is  plain 
and  simple  classification.  But  how  about  Mr.  Blue 
Fox  of  the  same  size  and  habit  as  the  wrhite  Arctic?  Is 
he  the  Arctic  fox  in  summer  clothing?  Yes,  say  some 
trappers;  and  they  show  their  pelts  of  an  Arctic  fox 
taken  in  summer  of  a  rusty  white.  But  no,  vow  other 
trappers — that  is  impossible,  for  here  are  blue  fox- 
skins  captured  in  the  depths  of  midwinter  with  not  a 
white  hair  among  them.  Look  closely  at  the  skins. 
The  ears  of  one  blue  fox  are  long,  perfect,  unbitten  by 
frost  or  foe — he  was  a  young  fellow;  and  he  is  blue. 
Here  is  another  with  ears  almost  worn  to  stubs  by 
fights  and  many  winters'  frosts — he  is  an  old  fellow; 
and  he,  too,  is  blue.  Well,  then,  the  blue  fox  may 
sometimes  be  the  white  Arctic  fox  in  summer  dress; 
but  the  blue  fox  who  is  blue  all  the  year  round,  varying 


OF  FOXES,   MANY   AND   VARIOUS  2f)l 

only  in  the  shades  of  blue  with  the  seasons^  is  certainly 
not  the  white  Arctic  fox. 

The  same  difficulty  besets  distinction  of  silver  fox 
from  black.  The  old  scientists  classified  these  as  one 
and  the  same  creature.  Trappers  know  better.  So  do 
the  later  scientists  who  almost  agree  with  the  un 
learned  trapper's  verdict — there  are  as  many  species 
as  there  are  foxes.  Black  fox  is  at  its  best  in  mid 
winter,  deep,  brilliantly  glossy,  soft  as  floss,  and  yet 
almost  impenetrable — the  very  type  of  perfection  of 
its  kind.  But  with  the  coming  of  the  tardy  Arctic 
spring  comes  a  change.  The  snows  are  barely  melted 
in  May  when  the  sheen  leaves  the  fur.  By  June,  the 
black  hairs  are  streaked  with  gray;  and  the  black  fox 
is  a  gray  fox.  Is  it  at  some  period  of  the  transition 
that  the  black  fox  becomes  a  silver  fox,  with  the  gray 
hairs  as  sheeny  as  the  black  and  each  gray  hair  deli 
cately  tipped  with  black?  That  question,  too,  remains 
unanswered;  for  certainly  the  black  fox  trapped  when 
in  his  gray  summer  coat  is  not  the  splendid  silver  fox 
of  priceless  value.  Black  fox  turning  to  a  dull  gray 
of  midsummer  may  not  be  silver  fox;  but  what  about 
gray  fox  turning  to  the  beautiful  glossy  black  of  mid 
winter?  Is  that  what  makes  silver  fox?  Is  silver  fox 
simply  a  fine  specimen  of  black  caught  at  the  very 
period  when  he  is  blooming  into  his  greatest  beauty? 
The  distinctive  difference  between  gray  fox  and  silver 
is  that  gray  fox  has  gray  hairs  among  hairs  of  other 
colour,  while  silver  fox  has  silver  hair  tipped  with 
glossiest  black  on  a  foundation  of  downy  gray  black. 

Even  greater  confusion  surrounds  the  origin  of 
cross  and  red  and  gray.  Trappers  find  all  these  differ 
ent  cubs  in  one  burrow;  but  as  the  cubs  grow,  those 


262       THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

pronounced  cross  turn  out  to  be  red,  or  the  red  be 
comes  cross;  and  what  they  become  at  maturity,  that 
they  remain,  varying  only  with  the  seasons.*  It  takes 
many  centuries  to  make  one  perfect  rose.  Is  it  the 
same  with  the  silver  fox?  Is  he  a  freak  or  a  climax  or 
the  regular  product  of  yearly  climatic  changes  caught 
in  the  nick  of  time  by  some  lucky  trapper?  Ask  the 
scientist  that  question,  and  he  theorizes.  Ask  the 
trapper,  and  he  tells  you  if  he  could  only  catch  enough 
silver  foxes  to  study  that  question,  he  would  quit  trap 
ping.  In  all  the  maze  of  ignorance  and  speculation, 
there  is  one  anchored  fact.  While  animals  turn  a 
grizzled  gray  with  age,  the  fine  gray  coats  are  not 
caused  by  age.  Young  animals  of  the  rarest  furs — fox 
and  ermine — are  born  in  ashy  colour  that  turns  to 
gray  while  they  are  still  in  their  first  nest. 

To  say  that  silver  fox  is  costly  solely  because  it  is 
rare  is  sheerest  nonsense.  It  would  be  just  as  sensible 
to  say  that  labradorite,  which  is  rare,  should  be  as 
costly  as  diamonds.  It  is  the  intrinsic  beauty  of  the 
fur,  as  of  the  diamonds,  that  constitutes  its  first  value. 
The  facts  that  the  taking  of  a  silver  fox  is  always  pure 
luck,  that  the  luck  comes  seldom,  that  the  trapper 
must  have  travelled  countless  leagues  by  snow-shoe  and 
dog  train  over  the  white  wastes  of  the  North,  that 
trappers  in  polar  regions  are  exposed  to  more  dangers 
and  hardships  than  elsewhere  and  that  the  fur  must 
have  been  carried  a  long  distance  to  market — add  to 
the  first  high  value  of  silver  fox  till  it  is  not  sur 
prising  that  little  pelts  barely  two  feet  long  have 
sold  for  prices  ranging  from  $500  to  $5,000.  For  the 

*  That  is,  as  far  as  trappers  yet  know. 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND   VARIOUS  263 

trapper  the  way  to  the  fortune  of  a  silver  fox  is  the 
same  as  the  road  to  fortune  for  all  other  men — by  the 
homely  trail  of  every-day  work.  Cheers  from  the  fort 
gates  bid  trappers  setting  out  for  far  Northern  fields 
God-speed.  Long  ago  there  would  have  been  a  firing  of 
cannon  when  the  Northern  hunters  left  for  their  dis 
tant  camping-grounds;  but  the  cannon  of  Churchill  lie 
rusting  to-day  and  the  hunters  who  go  to  the  sub- 
Arctics  and  the  Arctics  no  longer  set  out  from  Church 
ill  on  the  bay,  but  from  one  of  the  little  inland  Mac- 
Kenzie  Eiver  posts.  If  the  fine  powdery  snow-drifts 
are  glossed  with  the  ice  of  unbroken  sun-glare,  the 
runners  strap  iron  crampets  to  their  snow-shoes,  and 
with  a  great  jingling  of  the  dog-bells,  barking  of  the 
huskies,  and  yelling  of  the  drivers,  coast  away  for  the 
leagueless  levels  of  the  desolate  North.  Frozen  river 
beds  are  the  only  path  followed,  for  the  high  cliffs — 
almost  like  ramparts  on  the  lower  MacKenzie — shut 
off  the  drifting  east  winds  that  heap  barricades  of 
snow  in  one  place  and  at  another  sweep  the  ground  so 
clear  that  the  sleighs  pull  heavy  as  stone.  Does  a 
husky  fag?  A  flourish  of  whips  and  off  the  laggard 
scampers,  keeping  pace  with  the  others  in  the  traces,  a 
pace  that  is  set  for  forty  miles  a  day  with  only  one 
feeding  time,  nightfall  when  the  sleighs  are  piled  as  a 
wind-break  and  the  frozen  fish  are  doled  out  to  the 
ravenous  dogs.  Gun  signals  herald  the  hunter's  ap 
proach  to  a  chance  camp;  and  no  matter  how  small  and 
mean'  the  tepee,  the  door  is  always  open  for  whatever 
visitor,  the  meat  pot  set  simmering  for  hungry  travel 
lers.  When  the  snow  crust  cuts  the  dogs'  feet,  buck 
skin  shoes  are  tied  on  the  huskies;  and  when  an  occa 
sional  dog  fags  entirely,  he  is  turned  adrift  from  the 


264  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

traces  to  die.  Eelentless  as  death  is  Northern  cold; 
and  wherever  these  long  midwinter  journeys  are  made, 
gruesome  traditions  are  current  of  hunter  and  husky. 

I  remember  hearing  of  one  old  husky  that  fell 
hopelessly  lame  during  the  north  trip.  Often  the 
drivers  are  utter  brutes  to  their  dogs,  speaking  in 
curses  which  they  say  is  the  only  language  a  husky  can 
understand,  emphasized  with  the  blows  of  a  club.  Too 
often,,  as  well,  the  huskies  are  vicious  curs  ready  to 
skulk  or  snap  or  bolt  or  fight,  anything  but  work.  But 
in  this  case  the  dog  was  an  old  reliable  that  kept  the 
whole  train  in  line,  and  the  driver  had  such  an  affec 
tion  for  the  veteran  husky  that  when  rheumatism 
crippled  the  clog's  legs  the  man  had  not  the  heart  to 
shoot  such  a  faithful  servant.  The  dog  was  turned 
loose  from  the  traces  and  hobbled  lamely  behind  the 
scampering  teams.  At  last  he  fell  behind  altogether, 
but  at  night  limped  into  camp  whining  his  joy  and 
asking  dumbly  for  the  usual  fish.  In  the  morning 
when  the  other  teams  set  out,  the  old  husky  was  power 
less  to  follow.  But  he  could  still  whine  and  wag  his 
tail.  He  did  both  with  all  his  might,  so  that  when 
.the  departing  driver  looked  back  over  his  shoulder,  he 
saw  a  pair  of  eyes  pleading,  a  head  with  raised  alert 
ears,  shoulders  straining  to  lift  legs  that  refused  to 
follow,  and  a  bushy  tail  thwacking — thwacking — 
thwacking  the  snow! 

"  You  ought  to  shoot  him/'  advised  one  driver. 

"  You  do  it — you're  a  dead  sure  aim,"  returned  the 
man  who  had  owned  the  dog. 

But  the  other  drivers  were  already  coasting  over 
the  white  wastes.  The  owner  looked  at  his  sleighs  as 
if  wondering  whether  they  would  stand  an  additional 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND  VARIOUS  2C5 

burden.  Then  probably  reflecting  that  old  age  is  not 
desirable  for  a  suffering  dog  in  a  bitingly  keen  frost, 
he  turned  towards  the  husky  with  his  hand  in  his  belt. 
Thwack — thwack  went  the  tail  as  much  as  to  say:  "  Of 
course  he  wouldn't  desert  me  after  I've  hauled  his 
sleigh  all  my  life!  Thwack — thwack!  I'd  get  up  and 
jump  all  around  him  if  I  could;  there  isn't  a  dog-gone 
husky  in  all  polar  land  with  half  as  good  a  master  as 
I  have!" 

The  man  stopped.  Instead  of  going  to  the  dog 
he  ran  back  to  his  sleigh,  loaded  his  arms  full  of  frozen 
fish  and  threw  them  down  before  the  dog.  Then  he 
put  one  caribou-skin  under  the  old  dog,  spread  another 
over  him  and  ran  away  with  his  train  while  the  husky 
was  still  guzzling.  The  fish  had  been  poisoned  to  be 
thrown  out  to  the  wolves  that  so  often  pursue  Northern 
dog  trains. 

Once  a  party  of  hunters  crossing  the  Northern 
Eockies  came  on  a  dog  train  stark  and  stiff.  Where 
was  the  master  who  had  bidden  them  stand  while  he 
felt  his  way  blindly  through  the  white  whirl  of  a  bliz 
zard  for  the  lost  path?  In  the  middle  of  the  last 
century,  one  of  that  famous  family  of  fur  traders,  a 
MacKenzie,  left  Georgetown  to  go  north  to  Red  Eiver 
in  Canada.  He  never  went  back  to  Georgetown 
and  he  never  reached  Red  River;  but  his  coat  was 
found  fluttering  from  a  tree,  a  death  signal  to  at 
tract  the  first  passer-by,  and  the  body  of  the  lost 
trader  was  discovered  not  far  off  in  the  snow.  Un 
less  it  is  the  year  of  the  rabbit  pest  and  the  rabbit 
ravagers  are  bold  with  hunger,  the  pursuing  wolves 
seldom  give  full  chase.  They  skulk  far  to  the  rear 
of  the  dog  trains,  licking  up  the  stains  of  the  bleed- 


266  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

ing  feet,  or  hanging  spectrally  on  the  dim  frosty  hori 
zon  all  night  long.  Hunger  drives  them  on;  but  they 
seem  to  lack  the  courage  to  attack.  I  know  of  one  case 
where  the  wolves  followed  the  dog  trains  bringing  out 
a  trader's  family  from  the  North  down  the  river-bed 
for  nearly  five  hundred  miles.  What  man  hunter  would 
follow  so  far? 

The  farther  north  the  fox  hunter  goes,  the  shorter 
grow  the  days,  till  at  last  the  sun,  which  has  rolled 
across  the  south  in  a  wheel  of  fire,  dwindles  to  a  disk, 
the  disk  to  a  rim — then  no  rim  at  all  comes  up,  and  it 
is  midwinter  night,  night  but  not  darkness.  The  white  of 
endless  unbroken  snow,  the  glint  of  icy  particles  filling 
the  air,  the  starlight  brilliant  as  diamond  points,  the 
Aurora  Borealis  in  curtains  and  shafts  and  billows  of 
tenuous  impalpable  rose-coloured  fire — all  brighten  the 
polar  night  so  that  the  sun  is  unmissed.  This  is  the 
region  chiefly  hunted  by  the  Eskimo,  with  a  few  white 
men  and  Chippewyan  half-breeds.  The  regular  North 
ern  hunters  do  not  go  as  far  as  the  Arctics,  but  choose 
their  hunting-ground  somewhere  in  the  region  of 
"  little  sticks,"  meaning  the  land  where  timber  growth 
is  succeeded  by  dwarf  scrubs. 

The  hunting-ground  is  chosen  always  from  the  signs 
written  across  the  white  page  of  the  snow.  If  there 
are  claw-marks,  bird  signs  of  Northern  grouse  or  white 
ptarmigan  or  snow-bunting,  ermine  will  be  plentiful; 
for  the  Northern  birds  with  their  clogged  stockings  of 
feet  feathers  have  a  habit  of  floundering  under  the 
powdery  snow;  and  up  through  that  powdery  snow 
darts  the  snaky  neck  of  stoat,  the  white  weasel -hunter 
of  birds.  If  there  are  the  deep  plunges  of  the  white 
hare,  lynx  and  fox  and  mink  and  marten  and  pekan 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND  VARIOUS  267 

will  be  plentiful;  for  the  poor  white  hare  feeds  all  the 
creatures  of  the  Northern  wastes,  man  and  beast.  If 
there  are  little  dainty  tracks — oh,  such  dainty  tracks 
that  none  but  a  high-stepping,  clear-cut,  clean-limbed, 
little  thoroughbred  could  make  them! — tracks  of  four 
toes  and  a  thumb  claw  much  shorter  than  the  rest, 
with  a  padding  of  five  basal  foot-bones  behind  the  toes, 
tracks  that  show  a  fluff  on  the  snow  as  of  furred  foot- 
soles,  tracks  that  go  in  clean,  neat,  clear  long  leaps 
and  bounds — the  hunter  knows  that  he  has  found  the 
signs  of  the  Northern  fox. 

Here,  then,  he  will  camp  for  the  winter.  Camping 
in  the  Far  North  means  something  different  from  the 
hastily  pitched  tent  of  the  prairie.  The  north  wind 
blows  biting,  keen,  unbroken  in  its  sweep.  The  hunter 
must  camp  where  that  wind  will  not  carry  scent  of  his 
tent  to  the  animal  world.  For  his  own  sake,  he  must 
camp  under  shelter  from  that  wind,  behind  a  cairn  of 
stones,  below  a  cliff,  in  a  ravine.  Poles  have  been 
brought  from  the  land  of  trees  on  the  dog  sleigh. 
These  are  put  up,  criss-crossed  at  top,  and  over  them 
is  laid,  not  the  canvas  tent,  but  a  tent  of  skins,  caribou, 
wolf,  moose,  at  a  sharp  enough  angle  to  let  the  snow 
slide  off.  Then  snow  is  banked  deep,  completely  round 
the  tent.  For  fire,  the  Eskimo  depends  on  whale-oil 
and  animal  grease.  The  white  man  or  half-breed  from 
the  South  hoards  up  chips  and  sticks.  But  mainly  he 
depends  on  exercise  and  animal  food  for  warmth.  At 
night  he  sleeps  in  a  fur  bag.  In  the  morning  that  bag 
is  frozen  stiff  as  boards  by  the  moisture  of  his  own 
breath.  Need  one  ask  why  the  rarest  furs,  which  can 
only  be  produced  by  the  coldest  of  climates,  are  so 
costly? 


268  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Having  found  the  tracks  of  the  fox,  the  hunter  sets 
out  his  traps  baited  with  fish  or  rabbit  or  a  bird-head. 
If  the  snow  be  powdery  enough,  and  the  trapper  keen 
in  wild  lore,  he  may  even  know  what  sort  of  a  fox  to 
expect.  In  the  depths  of  midwinter,  the  white  Arctic 
fox  has  a  wool  fur  to  his  feet  like  a  brahma  chicken. 
This  leaves  its  mark  in  the  fluffy  snow.  A  ravenous 
fellow  he  always  is,  this  white  fox  of  the  hungry  North, 
bold  from  ignorance  of  man,  but  hard  to  distinguish 
from  the  snow  because  of  his  spotless  coat.  The  blue 
fox  being  slightly  smaller  than  the  full-grown  Arctic, 
lopes  along  with  shorter  leaps  by  which  the  trapper 
may  know  the  quarry;  but  the  blue  fox  is  just  as  hard 
to  distinguish  from  the  snow  as  his  white  brother. 
The  gray  frost  haze  is  almost  the  same  shade  as  his 
steel-blue  coat;  and  when  spring  comes,  blue  fox  is  the 
same  colour  as  the  tawny  moss  growth.  Colour  is  blue 
fox's  defence.  Consequently  blue  foxes  show  more 
signs  of  age  than  white — stubby  ears  frozen  low,  battle- 
worn  teeth,  dulled  claws. 

The  chances  are  that  the  trapper  will  see  the  black 
fox  himself  almost  as  soon  as  he  sees  his  tracks;  for  the 
sheeny  coat  that  is  black  fox's  beauty  betrays  him 
above  the  snow.  Bushy  tail  standing  straight  out, 
every  black  hair  bristling  erect  with  life,  the  white  tail- 
tip  flaunting  a  defiance,  head  up,  ears  alert,  fore  feet 
cleaving  the  air  with  the  swift  ease  of  some  airy  bird — 
on  he  comes,  jump — jump — jump — more  of  a  leap  than 
a  lope,  galloping  like  a  wolf,  altogether  different  from 
the  skulking  run  of  little  foxes,  openly  exulting  in  his 
beauty  and  his  strength  and  his  speed!  There  is  no 
mistaking  black  fox.  If  the  trapper  does  not  see  the 
black  fox  scurrying  over  the  snow,  the  tell-tale  char- 


THE  WHITE  ERMINE  269 

acteristics  of  the  footprints  are  the  length  and  strength 
of  the  leaps.  Across  these  leaps  the  hunter  leaves  his 
traps.  Does  he  hope  for  a  silver  fox?  Does  every 
prospector  expect  to  find  gold  nuggets?  In  the  heyday 
of  fur  company  prosperity.,  not  half  a  dozen  true  silver 
foxes  would  be  sent  out  in  a  year.  To-day  I  doubt  if 
more  than  one  good  silver  fox  is  sent  out  in  half  a 
dozen  years.  But  good  white  fox  and  black  and  blue 
are  prizes  enough  in  themselves,  netting  as  much  to  the 
trapper  as  mink  or  beaver  or  sable. 

II 
The  White  Ermine 

All  that  was  said  of  the  mystery  of  fox  life  applies 
equally  to  ermine.  Why  is  the  ermine  of  Wisconsin 
and  Minnesota  and  Dakota  a  dirty  little  weasel  noted 
for  killing  forty  chickens  in  a  night,  wearing  a  mahog 
any-coloured  coat  with  a  sulphur  strip  down  his  throat, 
while  the  ermine  of  the  Arctics  is  as  white  as  snow, 
noted  for  his  courage,  wearing  a  spotless  coat  which 
kings  envy,  yes,  and  take  from  him?  For  a  long  time 
the  learned  men  who  study  animal  life  from  museums 
held  that  the  ermine's  coat  turned  white  from  the  same 
cause  as  human  hair,  from  senility  and  debility  and  the 
depleting  effect  of  an  intensely  trying  climate.  But 
the  trappers  told  a  different  story.  They  told  of  baby 
ermine  born  in  Arctic  burrows,  in  March,  April,  May, 
June,  while  the  mother  was  still  in  white  coat,  babies 
born  in  an  ashy  coat  something  like  a  mouse-skin  that 
turned  to  fleecy  white  within  ten  days.  They  told  of 
ermine  shedding  his  brown  coat  in  autumn  to  display 
a  fresh  layer  of  iron-gray  fur  that  turned  sulphur 


270  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

white  within  a  few  days.  They  told  of  the  youngest 
and  smallest  and  strongest  ermine  with  the  softest  and 
whitest  coats.  That  disposed  of  the  senility  theory. 
All  the  trapper  knows  is  that  the  whitest  ermine  is 
taken  when  the  cold  is  most  intense  and  most  contin 
uous,  that  just  as  the  cold  slackens  the  ermine  coat 
assumes  the  sulphur  tinges,  deepening  to  russet  and 
brown,  and  that  the  whitest  ermine  instead  of  showing 
senility,  always  displays  the  most  active  and  courage 
ous  sort  of  deviltry. 

Summer  or  winter,  the  Northern  trapper  is  con 
stantly  surrounded  by  ermine  and  signs  of  ermine. 
There  are  the  tiny  claw-tracks  almost  like  frost 
tracery  across  the  snow.  There  is  the  rifled  nest  of  a 
poor  grouse — eggs  sucked,  or  chickens  murdered,  the 
nest  fouled  so  that  it  emits  the  stench  of  a  skunk,  or 
the  mother  hen  lying  dead  from  a  wound  in  her  throat. 
There  is  the  frightened  rabbit  loping  across  the  fields 
in  the  wildest,  wobbliest,  most  woe-begone  leaps,  try 
ing  to  shake  something  off  that  is  clinging  to  his 
throat  till  over  he  tumbles — the  prey  of  a  hunter  that 
is  barely  the  size  of  rabbit's  paw.  There  is  the  water- 
rat  flitting  across  the  rocks  in  blind  terror,  regardless 
of  the  watching  trapper,  caring  only  to  reach  safety — 
water — water!  Behind  comes  the  pursuer — this  is  no 
still  hunt  but  a  straight  open  chase — a  little  creature 
about  the  length  of  a  man's  hand,  with  a  tail  almost  as 
long,  a  body  scarcely  the  thickness  of  two  fingers,  a 
mouth  the  size  of  a  bird's  beak,  and  claws  as  small  as 
a  sparrow's.  It  gallops  in  lithe  bounds  with  its  long 
neck  straight  up  and  its  beady  eyes  fastened  on  the 
flying  water-rat.  Splash — dive — into  the  water  goes 
the  rat!  Splash — dive — into  the  water  goes  the 


THB  WHITE  ERMINE  271 

ermine!  There  is  a  great  stirring  up  of  the  muddy 
bottom.  The  water-rat  has  tried  to  hide  in  the  under- 
tangle;  and  the  ermine  has  not  only  dived  in  pursuit 
but  headed  the  water-rat  back  from  the  safe  retreat  of 
his  house.  Up  comes  a  black  nose  to  the  surface  of  the 
water.  The  rat  is  foolishly  going  to  try  a  land  race. 
Up  comes  a  long  neck  like  a  snake's,  the  head  erect, 
the  beady  eyes  on  the  fleeing  water-rat — then  with  a 
splash  they  race  overland.  The  water-rat  makes  for  a 
hole  among  the  rocks.  Ermine  sees  and  with  a  spurt 
of  speed  is  almost  abreast  when  the  rat  at  bay  turns 
with  a  snap  at  his  pursuer.  But  quick  as  flash,  the  er 
mine  has  pirouetted  into  the  air.  The  long  writhing 
neck  strikes  like  a  serpent's  fangs  and  the  sharp  fore 
teeth  have  pierced  the  brain  of  the  rat.  The  victim 
dies  without  a  cry,  without  a  struggle,  without  a  pain. 
That  long  neck  was  not  given  the  ermine  for  nothing. 
Neither  were  those  muscles  massed  on  either  side  of 
his  jaws  like  bulging  cheeks. 

In  winter  the  ermine's  murderous  depredations  are 
more  apparent.  Now  the  ermine,  too,  sets  itself  to 
reading  the  signs  of  the  snow.  Now  the  ermine  be 
comes  as  keen  a  still  hunter  as  the  man.  Sometimes 
a  whirling  snow-fall  catches  a  family  of  grouse  out 
from  furze  cover.  The  trapper,  too,  is  abroad  in  the 
snow-storm;  for  that  is  the  time  when  he  can  set  his 
traps  undetected.  The  white  whirl  confuses  the  birds. 
They  run  here,  there,  everywhere,  circling  about,  bury 
ing  themselves  in  the  snow  till  the  storm  passes  over. 
The  next  day  when  the  hunter  is  going  the  rounds  of 
these  traps,  along  comes  an  ermine.  It  does  not  see 
him.  It  is  following  a  scent,  head  down,  body  close  to 
ground,  nose  here,  there,  threading  the  maze  which 


272  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

the  crazy  grouse  had  run.  But  stop,  thinks  the  trap 
per,  the  snow-fall  covered  the  trail.  Exactly — that  is 
why  the  little  ermine  dives  under  snow  just  as  it  would 
under  water,  running  along  with  serpentine  wavings 
of  the  white  powdery  surface  till  up  it  comes  again 
where  the  wind  has  blown  the  snow-fall  clear.  Along  it 
runs,  still  intent,  quartering  back  where  it  loses  the 
scent— along  again  till  suddenly  the  head  lifts — that 
motion  of  the  snake  before  it  strikes!  The  trapper 
looks.  Tail  feathers,  head  feathers,  stupid  blinking 
eyes  poke  through  the  fluffy  snow-drift.  And  now  the 
ermine  no  longer  runs  openly.  There  are  too  many 
victims  this  time — it  may  get  all  the  foolish  hidden 
grouse;  so  it  dives  and  if  the  man  had  not  alarmed  the 
stupid  grouse,  ermine  would  have  darted  up  through 
the  snow  with  a  finishing  stab  for  each  bird. 

By  still  hunt  and  open  hunt,  by  nose  and  eye,  re 
lentless  as  doom,  it  follows  its  victims  to  the  death. 
Does  the  bird  perch  on  a  tree?  Up  goes  the  ermine, 
too,  on  the  side  away  from  the  bird's  head.  Does  the 
mouse  thread  a  hundred  mazes  and  hide  in  a  hole? 
The  ermine  threads  every  maze,  marches  into  the  hid 
den  nest  and  takes  murderous  possession.  Does  the 
rat  hide  under  rock?  Under  the  rock  goes  the  ermine. 
Should  the  trapper  follow  to  see  the  outcome  of  the 
contest,  the  ermine  will  probably  sit  at  the  mouth  of 
the  rat-hole,  blinking  its  beady  eyes  at  him.  If  he  at 
tacks,  down  it  bolts  out  of  reach.  If  he  retires,  out  it 
comes  looking  at  this  strange  big  helpless  creature  with 
bold  contempt. 

The  keen  scent,  the  keen  eyes,  the  keen  ears  warn 
it  of  an  enemy's  approach.  Summer  and  winter,  its 
changing  coat  conceals  it.  The  furze  where  it  runs 


THE  WHITE  ERMINE  273 

protects  it  from  fox  and  lynx  and  wolverine.  Its  size 
admits  it  to  the  tiniest  of  hiding-places.  All  that  the 
ermine  can  do  to  hunt  down  a  victim,  it  can  do  to  hide 
from  an  enemy.  These  qualities  make  it  almost  in 
vincible  to  other  beasts  of  the  chase.  Two  joints  in 
the  armour  of  its  defence  has  the  little  ermine.  Its 
black  tail-tip  moving  across  snow  betrays  it  to  ene 
mies  in  winter:  the  very  intentncss  on  prey,  its  ex 
cess  of  self-confidence,  leads  it  into  danger;  for  in 
stance,  little  ermine  is  royally  contemptuous  of  man's 
tracks.  If  the  man  does  not  molest  it,  it  will  follow  a 
scent  and  quarter  and  circle  under  his  feet;  so  the  man 
has  no  difficulty  in  taking  the  little  beast  whose  fur  is 
second  only  to  that  of  the  silver  fox.  So  bold  are  the 
little  creatures  that  the  man  may  discover  their  bur 
rows  under  brush,  in  rock,  in  sand  holes,  and  take  the 
whole  litter  before  the  game  mother  will  attempt  to 
escape.  Indeed,  the  plucky  little  ermine  will  follow 
the  captor  of  her  brood.  Steel  rat  traps,  tiny  dead 
falls,  frosted  bits  of  iron  smeared  with  grease  to  tempt 
the  ermine's  tongue  which  the  frost  will  hold  like  a 
vice  till  the  trapper  comes,  and,  mo^t  common  of  all, 
twine  snares  such  as  entrap  the  rabbit,  are  the  means 
by  which  the  ermine  comes  to  his  appointed  end  at  the 
hands  of  men. 

The  quality  of  the  pelt  shows  as  wide  variety  as 
the  skin  of  the  fox;  and  for  as  mysterious  reasons. 
Why  an  ermine  a  year  old  should  have  a  coat  like  sul 
phur  and  another  of  the  same  age  a  coat  like  swan's- 
down,  neither  trapper  nor  scientist  has  yet  discovered. 
The  price  of  the  perfect  ermine-pelt  is  higher  than  any 
other  of  the  rare  furs  taken  in  North  America  except 
silver  fox;  but  it  no  longer  commands  the  fabulous 
19 


274  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

prices  that  were  certainly  paid  for  specimen  ermine- 
skins  in  the  days  of  the  Georges  in  England  and  the 
later  Louis  in  France.  How  were  those  fabulously 
costly  skins  prepared?  Old  trappers  say  no  perfectly 
downy  pelt  is  ever  taken  from  an  ermine,  that  the 
downy  effect  is  produced  by  a  trick  of  the  trade — 
scraping  the  flesh  side  so  deftly  that  all  the  coarse 
hairs  will  fall  out,  leaving  only  the  soft  under-fur. 


CHAPTER   XIX 

WHAT   THE   TRAPPER   STANDS   FOR 

WAGING  ceaseless  war  against  beaver  and  moose, 
types  of  nature's  most  harmless  creatures,  against  wolf 
and  wolverine,  types  of  nature's  most  destructive 
agents,  against  traders  who  were  rivals  and  Indians 
who  were  hostiles,  the  trapper  would  almost  seem  to  be 
himself  a  type  of  nature's  arch-destroyer. 

Beautiful  as  a  dream  is  the  silent  world  of  forest 
and  prairie  and  mountain  where  the  trapper  moves 
with  noiseless  stealth  of  the  most  skilful  of  all  the 
creatures  that  prey.  In  that  world,  the  crack  of  the 
trapper's  rifle,  the  snap  of  the  cruel  steel  jaws  in  his 
trap,  seem  the  only  harsh  discords  in  the  harmony  of 
an  existence  that  riots  with  a  very  fulness  of  life.  But 
such  a  world  is  only  a  drean.  The  reality  is  cruel  as 
death.  Of  all  the  creatures  that  prey,  man  is  the  most 
merciful. 

Ordinarily,  knowledge  of  animal  life  is  drawn  from 
three  sources.  There  are  park  specimens,  stuffed  to 
the  utmost  of  their  eating  capacity  and  penned  off 
from  the  possibility  of  harming  anything  weaker  than 
themselves.  There  are  the  private  pots  fed  equally 
well,  pampered  and  chained  safely  from  harming  or 
being  harmed.  There  are  the  wild  creatures  roaming 

275 


276  THE  STORY   OF   THE  TRAPPER 

natural  haunts,  some  two  or  throe  days'  travel  from 
civilization,  whose  natures  have  been  gradually  modi 
fied  generation  by  generation  from  being  constantly 
hunted  with  long-range  repeaters.  Judging  from  these 
sorts  of  wild  animals,  it  certainly  seems  that  the  brute 
creation  has  been  sadly  maligned.  The  bear  cubs  lick 
each  other's  paws  with  an  amatory  singing  that  is 
something  between  the  purr  of  a  cat  and  the  grunt  of 
a  pig.  The  old  polars  wrestle  like  boys  out  of  school, 
flounder  in  grotesque  gambols  that  are  laughably 
clumsy,  good-naturedly  dance  on  their  hind  legs,  and 
even  eat  from  their  keeper's  hand.  And  all  the  deer 
family  can  be  seen  nosing  one  another  with  the  affec 
tion  of  turtle-doves.  Surely  the  worst  that  can  be  said 
of  these  animals  is  that  they  shun  the  presence  of  man. 
Perhaps  some  kindly  sentimentalist  wonders  if  things 
hadn't  gone  so  badly  out  of  gear  in  a  certain  historic 
garden  long  ago,  whether  mankind  would  not  be  on  as 
friendly  relations  with  the  animal  world  as  little  boys 
and  girls  are  with  bears  and  baboons  in  the  fairy  books. 
And  the  scientist  goes  a  step  further,  and  soberly  asks 
whether  these  wild  things  of  the  woods  are  not  kindred 
of  man  after  all ;  for  have  not  man  and  beast  ascended 
the  same  scale  of  life?  Across  the  centuries,  modern 
evolution  shakes  hands  with  old-fashioned  transmi 
gration. 

To  be  sure,  members  of  the  deer  family  sometimes 
kill  their  mates  in  fits  of  blind  rage,  and  the  innocent 
bear  cubs  fall  to  mauling  their  keeper,  and  the  old 
bears  have  been  known  to  eat  their  young.  These 
things  are  set'down  as  freaks  in  the  animal  world,  and 
in  nowise  allowed  to  upset  the  influences  drawn  from 
animals  living  in  unnatural  surroundings,  behind  iron 


WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR  277 

bars,  or  in  haunts  where  long-range  rifles  have  put  the 
fear  of  man  in  the  animal  heart. 

Now  the  trapper  studies  animal  life  where  there  is 
neither  a  pen  to  keep  the  animal  from  doing  what  it 
wants  to  do,  nor  any  rifle  hut  his  own  to  teach  wild 
creatures  fear.  Knowing  nothing  of  science  and  senti 
ment,  he  never  clips  facts  to  suit  his  theory.  On  the 
truthfulness  of  his  eyes  depends  his  own  life,  so  that 
he  never  blinks  his  eyes  to  disagreeable  facts. 

Looking  out  on  the  life  of  the  wilds  clear-visioned 
as  his  mountain  air,  the  trapper  sees  a  world  beautiful 
as  a  dream  but  cruel  as  death.  He  sees  a  world  where 
to  be  weak,  to  be  stupid,  to  be  dull,  to  be  slow,  to  be 
simple,  to  be  rash  are  the  unpardonable  crimes;  where 
the  weak  must  grow  strong,  keen  of  eye  and  ear  and 
instinct,  sharp,  wary,  swift,  wise,  and  cautious;  where 
in  a  word  the  weak  must  grow  fit  to  survive  or — perish ! 

The  slow  worm  fills  the  hungry  maw  of  the  gaping 
bird.  Into  the  soft  fur  of  the  rabbit  that  has  strayed 
too  far  from  cover  clutch  the  swooping  talons  of  an 
eagle.  The  beaver  that  exposes  himself  overland  risks 
bringing  lynx  or  wolverine  or  wolf  on  his  home  colony. 
Bird  preys  on  worm,  mink  on  bird,  lynx  on  mink,  wolf 
on  lynx,  and  bear  on  all  creatures  that  live  from  men 
and  moose  down  to  the  ant  and  the  embryo  life  in  the 
ant's  egg.  But  the  vision  of  ravening  destruction  does 
not  lead  the  trapper  to  morbid  conclusions  on  life  as  it 
leads  so  many  housed  thinkers  in  the  walled  cities;  for 
the  same  world  that  reveals  to  him  such  ravening 
slaughter  shows  him  that  every  creature,  the  weakest 
and  the  strongest,  has  some  faculty,  some  instinct, 
some  endowment  of  cunning,  or  dexterity  or  caution, 
some  gift  of  concealment,  of  flight,  of  semblance,  of 


278      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

death — that  will  defend  it  from  all  enemies.  The 
ermine  is  one  of  the  smallest  of  all  hunters,  but  it  can 
throw  an  enemy  off  the  scent  by  diving  under  snow. 
The  rabbit  is  one  of  the  most  helpless  of  all  hunted 
things,  but  it  can  take  cover  from  foes  of  the  air  under 
thorny  brush,  and  run  fast  enough  to  outwind  the 
breath  of  a  pursuer,  and  double  back  quick  enough  to 
send  a  harrying  eagle  flopping  head  over  heels  on  the 
ground,  and  simulate  the  stillness  of  inanimate  objects 
surrounding  it  so  truly  that  the  passer-by  can  scarcely 
distinguish  the  balls  of  fawn  fur  from  the  russet  bark 
of  a  log.  And  the  rabbit's  big  eyes  and  ears  are  not 
given  it  for  nothing. 

Poet  and  trapper  alike  see  the  same  world,  and  for 
the  same  reason.  Both  seek  only  to  know  the  truth, 
to  see  the  world  as  it  is;  and  the  world  that  they  see 
is  red  in  tooth  and  claw.  But  neither  grows  morbid 
from  his  vision;  for  that  same  vision  shows  each  that 
the  ravening  destruction  is  only  a  weeding  out  of  the 
unfit.  There  is  too  much  sunlight  in  the  trapper's 
world,  too  much  fresh  air  in  his  lungs,  too  much  red 
blood  in  his  veins  for  the  morbid  miasmas  that  bring 
bilious  fumes  across  the  mental  vision  of  the  housed 
city  man. 

And  what  place  in  the  scale  of  destruction  does  the 
trapper  occupy?  Modern  sentiment  has  almost  painted 
him  as  a  red-dyed  monster,  excusable,  perhaps,  because 
necessity  compels  the  hunter  to  slay,  but  after  all  only 
the  most  highly  developed  of  the  creatures  that  prey. 
Is  this  true?  Arch-destroyer  he  may  be;  but  it  should 
be  remembered  that  he  is  the  destroyer  of  destroyers. 

Animals  kill  young  and  old,  male  and  female. 

The  true  trapper  does  not  kill  the  young;  for  that 


WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR  279 

would  destroy  his  next  year's  hunt.  He  does  not  kill 
the  mother  while  she  is  with  the  young.  He  kills  the 
grown  males  which — it  can  he  safely  said — have  killed 
more  of  each  other  than  man  has  killed  in  all  the 
history  of  trapping.  Wherever  regions  have  heen 
hunted  by  the  pot-hunter,  whether  the  sportsman  for 
amusement  or  the  settler  supplying  his  larder,  game 
has  been  exterminated.  This  is  illustrated  by  all  the 
stretch  of  country  between  the  Platte  and  the  Sas 
katchewan.  Wherever  regions  have  been  hunted  only 
by  the  trapper,  game  is  as  plentiful  as  it  has  ever  been. 
This  is  illustrated  by  the  forests  of  the  Rockies,  by 
the  No-Man's  Land  south  of  Hudson  Bay  and  by  the 
Arctics.  Wherever  the  trapper  has  come  destroying 
grisly  and  coyote  and  wolverine,  the  prong  horn  and 
mountain-sheep  and  mountain-goat  and  wapiti  and 
moose  have  increased. 

But  the  trapper  stands  for  something  more  than  a 
game  warden,  something  more  than  the  most  merciful 
of  destroyers.  He  destroys  animal  life — a  life  which  is 
red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  murder  and  rapine  and 
cruelty — in  order  that  Innnan  life  may  be  preserved, 
may  be  rendered  independent  of  the  elemental  powers 
that  wage  war  against  it. 

It  is  a  war  as  old  as  the  human  race,  this  struggle 
of  man  against  the  elements,  a  struggle  alike  reflected 
in  Viking  song  of  warriors  conquering  the  sea,  and  in 
the  Scandinavian  myth  of  pursuing  Fenris  wolf,  and 
in  the  Finnish  epic  of  the  man-hero  wresting  secrets 
of  life-bread  from  the  earth,  and  in  Indian  folk-lore 
of  a  Hiawatha  hunting  beast  and  treacherous  wind. 
It  is  a  war  in  wrhich  the  trapper  stands  forth  as  a  con 
queror,  a  creature  sprung  of  earth,  trampling  all  the 


280  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

obstacles  that  earth  can  offer  to  human  will  under  Ms 
feet,  finding  paths  through  the  wilderness  for  the  ex 
plorer  who  was  to  come  after  him,  opening  doors  of 
escape  from  stifled  life  in  crowded  centres  of  popula 
tion,  preparing  a  highway  for  the  civilization  that  was 
to  follow  his  own  wandering  trail  through  the  wilds. 


APPENDIX 


WHEN  in  Labrador  and  Newfoundland  a  fews  years  ago,  the 
writer  copied  the  entries  of  an  old  half-breed  woman  trapper's 
daily  journal  of  her  life.  It  is  fragmentary  and  incoherent,  but 
gives  a  glimpse  of  the  Indian  mind.  It  is  written  in  English. 
She  was  seventy-five  years  old  when  the  diary  opened  in  Decem 
ber,  1893.  Her  name  was  Lydia  Campbell  and  she  lived  at 
Hamilton  Inlet.  Having  related  how  she  shot  a  deer,  skinning 
it  herself,  made  her  snow-shoes  and  set  her  rabbit  snares,  she 
closes  her  first  entry  with  : 

"  Well,  as  I  sed,  I  can't  write  much  at  a  time  now,  for  i  am 
getting  blind  and  some  mist  rises  up  before  me  if  i  sew,  read  or 
write  a  little  while." 

Lydia  Campbell's  mother  was  captured  by  Eskimo.  She  ran 
away  when  she  had  grown  up,  to  quote  her  own  terse  diary, 
"crossed  a  river  on  drift  sticks,  wading  in  shallows,  through 
woods,  meeting  bears,  sleeping  under  trees — seventy  miles  flight 
— saw  a  French  boat — took  off  skirt  and  waved  it  to  them — 
came — took  my  mother  on  board — worked  for  them — with  the 
sealers — camped  on  the  ice. 

"As  there  was  no  other  kind  of  women  to  marrie  hear,  the 
few  English  men  each  took  a  wife  of  that  sort  and  they  never 
was  sorry  that  they  took  them,  for  they  was  great  workers  and 
so  it  came  to  pass  that  I  was  one  of  the  youngest  of  them." 
[Meaning,  of  course,  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  one  of  these 
marriages.] 

"Our  young  man  pretended  to  spark  the  two  daughters  of 
Tomas.  He  was  a  one-armed  man,  for  he  had  shot  away  one 

281 


282      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

arm  firing  at  a  large  bird.  ...  He  double-loaded  his  gun  in 
his  fright,  so  the  por  man  lost  one  of  his  armes,  ...  he  was 
so  smart  with  his  gun  that  he  could  bring  down  a  bird  flying 
past  him,  or  a  deer  running  past  he  would  be  the  first  to  bring 
it  down." 

"They  was  holden  me  hand  and  telling  me  that  I  must  be 
his  mother  now  as  his  own  mother  is  dead  and  she  was  a  great 
friend  of  mine  although  we  could  not  understand  each  other's 
language  sometimes,  still  we  could  make  it  out  with  sins  and 
wonders." 

"April  7,  1894. — Since  I  last  wrote  on  this  book,  I  have 
been  what  people  call  cruising  about  here.  I  have  been  visiting 
some  of  my  friends,  though  scattered  far  apart,  with  my  snow- 
shoes  and  axe  on  my  shoulders.  The  nearest  house  to  this  place 
is  about  five  miles  up  a  beautiful  river,  and  then  through  woods, 
what  the  french  calls  a  portage — it  is  what  I  call  pretty.  Many  is 
the  time  that  I  have  been  going  with  dogs  and  komatick  40  or 
50  years  ago  with  my  husband  and  family  to  N.  W.  River,  to 
the  Hon.  Donald  A.  Smith  and  family  to  keep  N.  Year  or 
Easter." 

"My  dear  old  sister  Hannah  Mishlin  who  is  now  going  on 
for  80  years  old  and  she  is  smart  yet,  she  hunts  fresh  meat  and 
chops  holes  in  the  3  foot  ice  this  very  winter  and  catches  trout 
with  her  hook,  enough  for  her  household,  her  husband  not  able 
to  work,  he  has  a  bad  complaint." 

"You  must  please  excuse  my  writing  and  spelling  for  I  have 
never  been  to  school,  neither  had  I  a  spelling  book  in  my  young 
day— me  a  native  of  this  country,  Labrador,  Hamilton's  Inlet, 
Esquimaux  Bay — if  you  wish  to  know  who  I  am,  I  am  old 
Lydia  Campbell,  formerly  Lydia  Brooks,  then  Blake,  after 
Blake,  now  Campbell.  So  you  see  ups  and  downs  has  been  my 
life  all  through,  and  now  I  am  what  I  am— prais  the  Lord." 

"I  have  been  hunting  most  every  day  since  Easter,  and  to 


APPENDIX  283 

some  of  my  rabbit  snares  and  still  traps,  cat  traps  and  mink 
traps.  I  caught  7  rabbits  and  1  marten  and  I  got  a  fix  and  4 
partridges,  about  500  trout  besides  household  duties — never 
leave  out  morning  and  Evening  prayers  and  cooking  and  baking 
and  washing  for  5  people — 3  motherless  little  children — with 
so  much  to  make  for  sale  out  of  seal  skin  and  deer  skin  shoes, 
bags  and  pouches  and  what  not.  .  .  .  You  can  say  well  done 
old  half-breed  woman  in  Hamilton's  Inlet.  Good  night,  God 
bless  us  all  and  send  us  prosperity. 

"Yours  ever  true, 

"LYDIA  CAMPBELL." 

"We  are  going  to  have  an  evening  worship,  my  poor  old 
man  is  tired,  he  has  been  a  long  way  today  and  he  shot  2 
beautyful  white  partridges.  Our  boy  heer  shot  once  spruce 
partridge." 

"Caplin  so  plentiful  boats  were  stopped,  whales,  walrusses 
and  white  bears." 

"Muligan  River,  May  24,  1894. — They  say  that  once  upon 
a  time  the  world  was  drowned  and  that  all  the  Esquimaux 
were  drownded  but  one  family  and  he  took  his  family  and 
dogs  and  chattels  and  his  seal-skin  boat  and  Kiak  and  Koma- 
ticks  and  went  on  the  highest  hill  that  they  could  see,  and 
stayed  there  till  the  rain  was  over  and  when  the  water  dried 
up  they  descended  down  the  river  and  got  down  to  the  plains 
and  when  they  could  not  see  any  more  people,  they  took  off 
the  bottoms  of  their  boots  and  took  some  little  white  [seal] 
pups  and  sent  the  poor  little  things  off  to  sea  and  they  drifted 
to  some  islands  far  away  and  became  white  people.  Then 
they  done  the  same  as  the  others  did  and  the  people  spread 
all  over  the  world.  Such  was  my  poor  father's  thought.  .  .  . 
There  is  up  the  main  river  a  large  fall,  the  same  that  the  Amer 
ican  and  English  gentlemen  have  been  up  to  see.  [Referring 
to  Mr.  Bryant,  of  Philadelphia,  who  visited  Grand  Falls.]  Well 
there  is  a  large  whirlpool  or  hole  at  the  bottom  of  the  fall. 
The  Indians  that  frequent  the  place  say  that  there  is  three 


284:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

women — Indians — that  lives  under  that  place  or  near  to  it  I  am 
told,  and  at  times  they  can  hear  them  speaking  to  each  other 
louder  than  the  roar  of  the  falls."  [The  Indians  always  think 
the  mist  of  a  waterfall  signifies  the  presence  of  ghosts.] 

"  I  have  been  the  cook  of  that  great  Sir  D.  D.  Smith  that  is 
in  Canada  at  this  time.  [In  the  days  when  Lord  Strathcona 
was  chief  trader  at  Hamilton  Inlet.]  He  was  then  at  Rigolet 
Post,  a  chief  trader  only,  now  what  is  he  so  great  !  He  was 
seen  last  winter  by  one  of  the  women  that  belong  to  this  bay. 
She  went  up  to  Canada.  .  .  .  and  he  is  gray  headed  and  bended, 
that  is  Sir  D.  D.  Smith." 

"  August  1,  1894. — My  dear  friends,  you  will  please  excuse 
my  writing  and  spelling — the  paper  sweems  by  me,  my  eyesight 
is  dim  now " 

(3) 


THE  END 


GENERAL  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA— BERKELEY 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or  on  the 

date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


10Nov'55GB 
NOV     3 195 


LIBRARY  U§E 

AUG  15  1961 


REC'D  LD 

AUG  1 5  1961 


Due  end  of  SPRING  Quart 
Subject  to  recall  after- 


NOV 


21-100m-l,'54(1887sl6)476 


r     JUN    1571    64 


NDV101973 
OT3-4PW 


•  V.'. 


